10 Maggie Smith Movies To Watch In Memory Of The Star
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3 months ago
From her breakout role to her most famous
Born in 1934, Margaret Natalie Smith (aka Maggie Smith) is one of Britain’s – and perhaps the English-speaking world’s – most treasured actors in history. A Dame since 1990 for her services to the performing arts, Smith’s first film, TV and theatre roles came in the early 1950s, and she has been an enduring tour de force ever since. In recent years, she has been known for playing Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter franchise, Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey and Muriel Donnelly in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (and its sequel) – but these roles only serve to showcase the longevity of her talent and wit, with adept and accoladed performances across her seven decades of acting. In memory of Maggie Smith, who sadly passed away on 27 September 2024, aged 89, here are 10 films and TV shows showcasing her best work.
Best Maggie Smith Movies & TV Shows
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
Earning Dame Maggie Smith her very first Oscar, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a drama centring on a teacher at an all girls school in Edinburgh in the 1930s. Brodie is outspoken and believes herself to be in the prime of her life – her sexual prime in particular. She gains a posse of impressionable young girls who latch onto her every word, but all ends in calamity, with the ending spawning the famous line: ‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.’
Sadly, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is not available to stream at the moment.
Travels with My Aunt (1972)
Based on Graham Greene’s 1969 novel of the same name, one of Dame Maggie Smith’s best-loved performances was as Augusta Bertram in Travels with My Aunt – a performance which bagged her an Oscar nomination. The film centres on Henry Pulling (Alec McCowen), who is approached by an unfamiliar and eccentric woman at his mother’s funeral who claims to be his aunt, and announces the woman who raised him was not his biological mother.
Rent on Apple TV.
California Suite (1978)
Featuring several intertwined stories, Maggie Smith stars as Diana Barrie opposite Michael Caine as her husband Sidney Cochran in California Suite, an anthology comedy set in Los Angeles’ luxurious Beverly Hills Hotel – which earned Smith another Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actress. Diana is a British actress in LA for the Oscars, while Sidney is her closeted gay husband, and the duo struggle for compatibility and fulfilment. Other stars in the film include Jane Fonda, Alan Alda, Water Matthau, Elaine May, Richard Prior and Bill Cosby.
Rent on Prime Video.
A Room with a View (1985)
Based on E. M. Forster’s classic novel, A Room with a View is brimming with British talent: Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Daniel Day-Lewis and Judi Dench all star, alongside Maggie Smith, of course. Set in England and Italy in 1907, the film centres on Lucy Youngchurch (Bonham Carter), a young woman suffering the final throes of repressed Edwardian England as her love develops for the free-spirited George Emerson (Sands).
Rent on Apple TV.
Downton Abbey
A classic for any Maggie Smith fan is Downton Abbey, a British costume drama set between 1912 and 1926 on the titular Yorkshire country estate. Playing Violet Crawley, mother of Robert Crawley, The Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), the series ran for six seasons and two films, with a third film in the works, all following the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their domestic servants.
All episodes are available to stream on Netflix.
Gosford Park (2001)
Downton fans shouldn’t miss Gosford Park, a 2001 film from the same creator, Julian Fellowes. Drawing influence from Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game and starring an ensemble including Charles Dance, Stephen Fry, Michael Gambon, Richard E. Grant, Derek Jacobi, Helen Mirren, Kirstin Scott Thomas and Emily Watson alongside Maggie Smith, the film follows a party of wealthy Brits who gather for a shooting weekend at the titular country house, joined by an American and their servants. But a murder after dinner slices through the jollity and the film descends into a whodunnit.
Stream for free on ITVX.
Death on the Nile (1978)
Before Kenneth Branagh, we had Peter Ustinov, who played the classic Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot in John Guillermin and Anthony Shaffer’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1937 novel of the same name. Death on the Nile also stars Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Jane Birken, David Niven, George Kennedy, Jack Warden and, of course, Maggie Smith. Whisking us back to 1937, the film is set in Egypt, predominantly on a steamboat on the River Nile, and is a classic Christie murder mystery.
Stream on Prime Video.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)
This much-loved film gathers some of Britain’s best known older actors and submerges them in a romantic comedy, all backdropped by sun soaked India. Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton and Maggie Smith all star as a group of British pensioners who have made the big move to India for a retirement in the sun.
Stream on Disney+.
Sister Act (1992)
You’d be forgiven for not remembering that Maggie Smith also starred in the 1992 classic musical-crime-comedy film, Sister Act, what with the inimitable Whoopi Goldberg shining bright at the fore. But Maggie was indeed the Reverend Mother to Whoopi’s lapsed Catholic Delores.
Stream on Disney+.
Harry Potter Films (2001–2011)
And last but not least, Maggie Smith is synonymous with Minerva McGonagall, the fiercely loyal yet stern transfiguration professor, head of Gryffindor House and deputy head of Hogwarts. Thus, Maggie quickly became a beloved face amid younger generations who may not have been familiar with her work before, with Maggie herself even sharing that filming the series of movies brought her closer to her grandchildren.
All eight films are available to stream on Netflix.
