Maggie Smith, the dowager countess of comic timing
She could transform herself into anyone, hilariously
BY THE time she was in “Downton Abbey”, the television series in which she played the waspish Dowager Countess of Grantham, Maggie Smith was 75 years old and had won every acting prize you could name. And yet, she told an interviewer, “I’d led a perfectly normal life…Nobody knew who the hell I was.”
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Maggie Smith”
Obituary October 5th 2024
From the October 5th 2024 edition
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