Maggie Smith of Downton Abbey, Harry Potter fame has died aged 89

Her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, stated in a press release that Smith died early Friday in a London hospital. “She leaves two sons and 5 loving grandchildren who’re devastated by the lack of their extraordinary mom and grandmother,” they stated in a press release issued by means of publicist Clair Dobbs.

An enviable legacy

To millennials worldwide, Maggie was recognized for enjoying the dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, a job that appeared tailored for an actress recognized for purse-lipped asides and malicious cracks, and Professor McGonagall within the Harry Potter motion pictures. She’s one of many few actors to win the treble of an Oscar (two), Emmy (4), and Tony, Maggie’s lengthy profession began on the stage within the 1950s.

Her first Academy Award nomination was for her flip enjoying Desdemona reverse Laurence Olivier’s Othello in 1965, earlier than successful the Oscar for her function as an Edinburgh schoolmistress in 1969’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

She received her second Oscar for her supporting function within the 1978 comedy California Suite, a efficiency that prompted co-star Michael Caine to say: “Maggie did not simply steal the movie, she dedicated grand larceny.”

Different critically acclaimed roles included Girl Bracknell in Wilde’s The Significance of Being Earnest on the West Finish stage, a 92-year-old bitterly combating senility in Edward Albee’s play Three Tall Ladies, and her half in 2001 black comedy film Gosford Park.

In 1990 Maggie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and have become a Dame. She was steadily rated the preeminent British girl actor of a technology that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench.

Inputs from AP and Reuters