Gone, but never forgotten – Here are Maggie Smith’s best movies & TV shows

Dame Maggie Smith’s acting career spanned a remarkable seven decades. The legendary British actress passed away on September 27, 2024, leaving behind a legacy of excellent performances on both stage and screen.

Smith’s acting career began when she was a college student at the Oxford Playhouse. She was a rising star in British theater for years before shifting to television and film work. She’s won dozens of acting awards, including two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award.

We love her in small roles in movies like Hook, The First Wives Club, and Murder By Death, but if we had to choose just ten Dame Maggie Smith roles, we have to go with the titles listed below.

10. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

This early role earned Smith the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1969. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was adapted from a stage play. It’s about Jean Brodie (Smith), a teacher at an all-girls school in Scotland in the 1930s whose freewheeling lifestyle has a ripple effect on her students’ lives forever.

9. The Lady in the Van (2015)

Smith steals the show in this mostly-true story written by Alan Bennett. In 1974, Bennett moved into a new home in north London and discovered it came with an unexpected bonus: an unhoused woman who lived in her van around the neighborhood. He eventually offered to let her park permanently in his driveway, and she lived there for the next 15 years. Smith’s turn as the cantankerous, complex, and surprisingly tender title character earned her multiple award nominations.

8. California Suite (1972)

In another film adapted from a stage play, Smith played a down-on-her-luck British actress staying in a luxury suite with her closeted gay husband, Sidney (Michael Caine). The movie is written by Neil Simon, who wrote a similar movie called Plaza Suite. Both are anthologies containing several different stories about the people who come to stay in a hotel suite. Smith earned her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for this role.

7. Sister Act (1992)

Smith plays the gruff, reluctant Reverend Mother to Whoopi Goldberg’s wild Deloris Van Cartier in this super-popular musical crime comedy from 1992. Backed up by Kathy Najimy, Wendy Makkena, Mary Wickes, and Harvey Keitel, Sister Act is a fun movie that leaves you humming old classic songs like, “My Girl” and “Rescue Me.”

6. My House in Umbria (2003)

Smith won a Primetime Emmy Award for this charming made-for-TV movie set in Italy. She plays an eccentric romance novelist with a traumatic past that haunts her, but her heart is healed when three strangers enter her life unexpectedly. She’s joined by Ronnie Barker, Benno Furmann, and Chris Cooper.

5. A Room With A View (1985)

A Room With A View was a smash hit when it premiered in 1985, receiving dozens of award nominations. Smith received an Academy Award nomination for her part in the film, playing the uptight chaperone to Helena Bonham Carter’s Lady Honeychurch.

4. Gosford Park (2001)

Before there was Downton Abbey, there was Gosford Park. Both written by Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey was originally conceived as a spinoff to this film, but Fellowes later decided to set Downton about a decade later, in the mid-1920s.

Gosford Park is a satirical murder mystery with comedic elements that was directed by Robert Altman (M*A*S*H). It takes place on a posh English country estate, where servants toil quietly downstairs and the upper crush sip (and spill) tea upstairs. Smith got another Oscar nom for her role as the perpetually aloof Constance, Dowager Countess of Trentham.

3. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012)

If you’re looking for a cozy, feel-good film, look no further. Smith joins fellow awesome Brits Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, and Penelope Wilton in this sweet movie about a group of English pensioners who move to a hotel in India run by Sonny (Dev Patel). This movie is a ray of sunshine on a cold day.

2. Downton Abbey (2010 – 2015)

Smith played everyone’s favorite cantankerous matriarch in the British historical drama series Downton Abbey. For six seasons, five Christmas specials, and two movies, Smith’s depiction of the sharp-witted Violet Crawley, dowager Countess of Grantham, won the actress a new generation of fans. She won three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her work on this show.

1. The Harry Potter film series (2001–2011)

None of our childhoods would be the same without Smith in the role of Professor/Headmaster Minerva McGonnagall in all eight Harry Potter movies. Her strict yet kind character became a surrogate parent for the orphaned Harry, earning her a special place in our hearts.

As with all of her roles, Smith brought a certain wry humor to this character. Her talents will be sorely missed now that she’s no longer with us, but at least we have hours and hours of film to remember her by.