‘Never shy on stage, always shy off it’ – what Dame Maggie Smith was really like
She was a national treasure with multiple awards under her belt. But somewhat surprisingly, Dame Maggie Smith never loved the limelight.
“I’m never shy on stage, always shy off it,” is how she once described herself to the critic Nancy Banks Smith.
She never watched herself in Downton Abbey. She famously didn’t even turn up to accept her first Oscar.
And in a rare interview for the British Film Institute in 2017, she lamented no longer being able to walk down the street without being stopped by admiring fans.
Although she had been an acclaimed stage actress since the 1960s, and had a varied and successful career on the big screen, she insisted she had led “a perfectly normal life” until her role in Downton Abbey.
The ITV drama, which was loved by viewers all around the world, had elevated her to a new level of superstardom late in her life – and she indicated that she regretted what she had lost as a result.
In the drama, which aired between 2010 and 2015, Dame Maggie played Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, the grand matriarch who excelled at withering one-liners.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said of the way public recognition changed during that time.
Recalling pre-Downtown life, she said: “I’d go to theatres, I’d go to galleries, and things like that on my own. And now I can’t. And that’s awful.”
She added that Fulham Road, in southwest London, was “dodgy” enough without being spotted walking down it.
That’s not to say she never liked being approached by fans.
Her role as the formidable Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films won her legions of younger fans – something she seemed to enjoy.
“A lot of very small people used to say hello to me and that was nice,” she said during an interview on the Graham Norton Show in 2015.
“It was a whole different lot of people,” she said, noting that, to them, it was like she had never existed before.
“She loved kids recognising her from Harry Potter,” added Nick Hytner, the stage and screen director who directed Dame Maggie in The Lady in the Van. “She loved that.”
‘She loved Bananagrams’
For those who worked with her, it’s understandable they may have felt a bit of trepidation at first, given her enormous reputation.
Lesley Nichol, who acted as Downton Abbey’s cook, said she was “terrified” when she first heard she would be working with Dame Maggie.
“I’d never worked with someone of that calibre,” she told BBC Radio Ulster. “And I thought, I don’t know what I’ll say to her, it will be really tricky, God she’ll probably be really grand.”
Ronald Grant