Dame Maggie Smith brought an incredible range of expression to her roles and received high praise from directors and fellow actors alike.

It was said of her that she never took a role lightly and would often walk around during rehearsals breaking her lines while the rest of the cast was on break.

In a profession notorious for its insecurities, her career was notable for its longevity.

She made her acting debut in 1952 and was still working sixty years later, having gone from aspiring star to national treasure.

Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, Essex, on December 28, 1934, the daughter of a pathologist.

As war loomed, the family moved to Oxford and young Maggie attended the Oxford School for Girls.

She started in theater as a fast girl and understudy at the Oxford Repertory. She once claimed that she never took the stage while she was there because no one in the company ever got sick.

Her company moved to a small theater in London in 1955, where she caught the attention of an American producer, Leonard Stillman, who cast her in New Faces, a revue that opened on Broadway in June 1956.

She stood out among the unknown cast and, on her return to London, was offered a six-month stint in the revue Share My Lettuce opposite Kenneth Williams.

Her first film role was an uncredited role in the 1956 production Child in the House.

Two years later she was nominated for a Bafta as best newcomer in the 1958 melodrama Nowhere to Go, in which she played a girl who shelters an escaped convict.

The Times described her role in the successful 1963 London production of Mary Mary, saying she was “the saving grace of this fluffy Broadway comedy”.

She almost stole the show from Richard Burton in the film The VIPs when she appeared in a pivotal scene with the Welsh star.

A critic noted that “when Maggie Smith appears on the screen, the picture moves”, and Burton later teasingly described her pranking him as “grand larceny”.

Later in 1963, Laurence Olivier offered her the role of Desdemona opposite his Othello, at the National Theatre. The production, featuring the original cast, was adapted into a film two years later, with Smith nominated for an Academy Award.

The role that brought her international fame came in 1969 when she played the determined nonconformist teacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The role earned her an Oscar for Best Actress.

She also married her co-star Robert Stephens.

The actress continued with the National Theater for two more years, including an appearance as Mrs Sullen in the Restoration comedy The Beaux’ Stragem in Los Angeles.

She received another Oscar nomination for Best Actress after playing Aunt Augusta in the 1972 George Cukor film Travels With My Aunt.

She and Stephens divorced in 1975, and a year later she married the playwright Beverley Cross, also moving to Canada and spending four years in a repertory company where she took on heavier roles in Macbeth and Richard III.

One critic, writing about her performance as Lady Macbeth, concluded that she had “fused her own vibrant personality with that of her charismatic subject”.

Despite her success, she was modest about her achievements, saying simply, “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started acting, and one is still acting.”

She continued to work in cinema, starring opposite Peter Ustinov in the 1978 film Death on the Nile and, the same year, the role of Diana Barrie in Neil Simon’s California Suite.

The 1980s saw a number of memorable screen performances and more awards, including Baftas for A Private Function and A Room With A View, the latter also earning her a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination.

There were more Baftas, first for her interpretation of the aging alcoholic in Judith Hearne’s The Lonely Passion and then in Bed Among The Lentils, one of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series for the BBC.

It was back on stage in 1987 in Lettice and Lovage at the Globe Theater in London before the production moved to New York. But her run was interrupted after she had a cycling accident and then learned she needed eye surgery.

When she finally resumed work on Lettice and Lovage after a twelve-month hiatus, her performance in New York won her a Tony.

In 1990, she was established as DBE and a year later appeared as the aging Wendy in Hook, Stephen Spielberg’s sequel to Peter Pan.

Other films followed, including Sister Act, alongside Whoopi Goldberg, and The Secret Garden for which she was nominated for a Bafta.

The new century brought a Bafta and an Emmy nomination for the role of Betsey Trotwood in David Copperfield’s BBC production.

A year later, she appeared as Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a role she would reprise in all subsequent Potter films.

She was reportedly the only artist specifically requested by author JK Rowling, and she brought a little touch of Miss Jean Brodie to Hogwarts.

In 2004, she appeared with her long-time friend and colleague Dame Judi Dench in the gentle drama Ladies in Lavender.

The New York Times concluded that Smith and Dench “sink into their roles as comfortably as house cats snuggling into a down comforter on a windy, rainy night.”

Two years later she was the penniless Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park, Robert Altman’s take on the murder of an English country house.

Her performance was a delight, with a layer of snobbery from which the masterful takedown would emerge, especially in the case of Mr.’s failed film. Novello.

It was a role she arguably reprized in all but name when she was cast in the ITV drama Downton Abbey. Her character’s name may have been changed to the Dowager Countess of Grantham, but the performance was essentially similar.

“It’s true that I don’t tolerate fools, but they don’t tolerate me either, so I’m prickly,” she once said. “Maybe that’s why I’m so good at playing prickly older ladies.”

She remained with the cast of Downton Abbey until 2015, when the series finally came to an end and reprized the role in two films in 2019 and 2022.

In 2007, while filming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was given the all-clear after two years of treatment.

Despite feeling weak after her illness, she starred in the final Harry Potter film and received a Bafta nomination for her role in the 2012 film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

In 2015, she gave a moving performance in the film The Lady in the Van, based on the true story of Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van in writer Alan Bennett’s London driveway for fifteen years.

She had previously appeared in the stage version of the story, for which she won an Olivier for Best Actress, and a 2009 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Bennett’s play.

Dame Maggie gave few interviews, but she was once asked to define the appeal of acting. “I love the ephemerality of theater: every performance is like a ghost: it’s there and then it’s gone.”