CNN
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Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain’s best-known actresses whose long career ranged from starring opposite Laurence Olivier in ‘Othello’ on stage and screen, to roles in ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Downton Abbey’, has died , her sons announced in a press release. statement shared by their publicist Clair Dobbs.

She was 89.

“It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith. She passed away peacefully in hospital this morning, Friday 27 September. She was an intensely private person and was with friends and family at the end,” the statement read. “She leaves behind two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their special mother and grandmother. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and continued kindness during her final days.”

Smith was born in 1934 in Ilford, then a middle-class suburb of east London. Shortly before the start of the Second World War, the family moved to Oxford, where her father worked as a pathologist at the University of Oxford.

After graduating from high school, Smith attended the Oxford Playhouse School from 1951 to 1953, where she made her stage debut in an Oxford University Dramatic Society production of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”

She next appeared on Broadway in ‘New Faces of 1956’ and then took the lead role in the London revue ‘Share My Lettuce’ between 1957 and 1958. She soon began appearing regularly in plays at The Old Vic theater in London.

In 1964, she played Desdemona in Olivier’s Othello, before reprising the role for the film version the following year. Smith won her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1969 for her portrayal of an unconventional schoolteacher in the film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”

In 1978, she received a second Academy Award, this time for Best Supporting Actress, for her role in Neil Simon’s ‘California Suite’. She also received British Academy Film Awards for her work, including for her roles in 1985’s ‘A Room with a View’ and 1987’s ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne’.

Smith was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1990 and from then on was commonly known as Dame Maggie Smith.

But in many ways her best roles were yet to come, including a starring role in the 1999 classic “Tea with Mussolini,” about a group of upper-middle-class English women in Florence, Italy, during the time of fascism, directed by Franco Zeffirelli .

Perhaps she will be best remembered as an actress who not only managed to live a long life, but managed to achieve even greater fame later in life.

She was brought to the attention of younger viewers as the strict but fair witchcraft teacher Minerva McGonagall in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001), and also appeared in several “Harry Potter” sequels.

Once again, she won acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic for her portrayal of the acerbic Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ‘Downton Abbey’, the critically acclaimed period drama about the British aristocracy. She received three Emmy Awards for the role, which she reprized for a 2019 feature film.

In her later years, Smith became a role model for aging gracefully, a process she tackled with her usual charm and humor.

When British magazine ‘Women’s World’ asked in 2017 why she hadn’t attended more awards shows, Smith replied: ‘I honestly think if I went to Los Angeles, for example, I would scare people… They don’t’ I don’t see older people.”

Smith was married twice, to actor Robert Stephens – the couple divorced in 1974 – and again to playwright Beverley Cross, from 1975 until his death in 1998.