Oscar History: Dame Maggie Smith
Saturday, September 28, 2019 at 3:22PM
by Cláudio Alves
Younger audiences may know Dame Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall and the sharp-tongued Countess of Grantham, but, before Downton Abbey and Harry Potter, she was already a British national treasure, having won two Oscars by 1979, with four additional nominations. This awards season, with the Dowager Countess promoted to the big screen, she might return to the Academy’s good graces.
Her Downton Abbey role has already proven an awards magnet with three Emmys and a Golden Globe. Maybe its popularity will translate to movie awards?
Maggie Smith's breakthrough screen role in "The VIPs," her third film.In the film, Smith manages to deliver witty barbs with her usual aplomb, while also mining the vulnerability of the character in a marvelous late film exchange with Michelle Dockery. It's left many fans teary-eyed, reminding us that Smith won’t be here forever and we shouldn’t take her for granted.
Maggie Smith’s history with the Oscars goes back to the early years of her career, right around the time she started doing films alongside her stage and television work. In 1963, she was the best thing about The V.I.P.s and, while it was her costar Margaret Rutherford that got the Oscar, Smith was nominated for the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. The very next year she was a scene-stealer in The Pumpkin Eater and, finally, in 1965, her Desdemona in Othello would be the role that won Maggie Smith her first Academy Award nomination.
Though I’m a longtime fan of the actress, this first nomination is not an auspicious one. The whole production is somewhat of a disaster, made for the proscenium of the Theatre and not calibrated for the intimacy of the camera. Still, Smith was one of four actors nominated and, five years later, she actually got a deserved Oscar nomination. That time, she even won.
The titular role of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a meaty one and Smith sinks her teeth in. Dangerously delusional, magnetically glamourous and proficient at the art of lying to oneself, Miss Brodie is a force of nature and Maggie Smith is marvelous at inhabiting her many facets. According to Inside Oscar, her nomination was somewhat of a surprise and she wasn’t even there to accept the award.
California Suite (1978)
Years later, she would be in attendance to receive her second Oscar, for her supporting turn in California Suite where she plays a neurotic Oscar nominee flying in from London to attend the Academy Awards. Though she’s been accused of overacting, Smith transforms Neil Simon’s anemic characterization into a hilarious, but painful, cocktail of actorly self-centeredness and matrimonial anguish. If you want to truly see Smith being out-of-control cartoonish, see 1972’s Travels with My Aunt instead, the absolute nadir of her Oscar nominated work.
The 80s would be a decade of great work in little-seen British productions that would be BAFTA nominated but had no such luck with the Academy. Only her performance as spinster Charlotte Bartlett in Merchant / Ivory’s A Room with a View would make a blip on the Oscars’ radar. I think she should have won, but it’s difficult to argue against Diane Wiest in Hannah and Her Sisters, the actual winner. The following decade would see Smith work more and more in cinema and become the character actress we all know and love.
In 2001 playing a classic Gladys Cooper-style old rich bitch in Gosford Park, Maggie Smith would receive her sixth and (at the moment) final Oscar nomination for Gosford Park. Since then, she’s been busy with the Harry Potter franchise and many TV productions, though far from Oscar. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel marked the beginning of a new phase of her career, with Maggie Smith using her newfound popularity to get herself into the awards conversation again. Still, despite BAFTA, SAG and Golden Globe nominations, neither that delightful British comedy, its sequel, My Old Lady, or The Lady in the Van managed to secure her a seventh Oscar nomination.
Maybe Downton Abbey will do the trick, maybe not. Either way, her (likely) last bow as Violet Crowley is a beautiful showcase for Dame Maggie Smith’s talent and her star-power. She hasn’t been this awards worthy on the big screen since Gosford Park. I would be happy to see her again in the Oscar conversation. Will the Academy be similarly moved? (Were you?) As with most things, time will tell.
Maggie Smith’s Oscar History by the numbers
Oscar wins: 2 (Best Actress 1969 for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Best Supporting Actress 1978 for California Suite)
Additional Oscar nominations: 4 (Best Supporting Actress 1965 for Othello, Best Actress 1972 for Travels with my Aunt, Best Supporting Actress 1986 for A Room with a View, Best Supporting Actress 2001 for Gosford Park)
Biggest Oscar snubs: Quartet (Best Supporting Actress 1981), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Best Actress 1987), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Best Supporting Actress 2011)
Number of films that she's been in that have caught Oscar's eye in one way or another: 18 (around 32% of her credited films)
Reader Comments (25)
Also great in Sister Act! A twist on her world-weary wisecrackers
I was not going to watch the Downton movie, but I think this article made me change my mind.
And Smith really does deserve to join the club of 7 time Oscar nominees. Was not a fan of her first win (it was Fonda's year for me), but loved all of her subsequently nominated roles (yes, even Travels - she's hilarious in it). Her chances are pretty high considering that supporting actress field does not seem particularly crowded this year (Dern looks like the only lock, while Lopez, Puth, Bening, Robbie have their disadvantages).
Maggie Smith has two BREATHTAKING leading roles which are also diametrically opposed to one another:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
&
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987)
These two leading roles demonstrate she has a brilliant range.
She should've been nominated for both and she should've won both times.
Maggie Smith's been in 2 movies called "Quartet"???
She's also fantastic in 'A Private Function,' as well as 2 HBO films - 'My House in Umbria' & 'Capturing Mary'
I appreciate that she's private - but I'd love to hear her talk about acting. What she does is very unique and difficult. She can find the humor & pathos in a single beat - Yes, she's a master of comedy but she can be devastating with tragedy too. How does she do it?!
I'd also argue she was snubbed for The Lady in the Van for Jennifer Lawrence probably.
She's the British Meryl but I have found her in the last 20 years coasting on that voice and those mannerisms,seemed to me she solidified her schtick in Gosford Park and simply stuck to it with little or no varation bar The Lady in the Van and it's is somewhat present there to.
Travels with my Aunt is horrendous and her in it.
I still say her greatest Lead work is The Lonely Passion of Judith Herne.
The same year she won for "California Suite" she also had a great supporting turn as Bowers on fantastic adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile" sharing the screen with the one and only Bette Davis. In this upstairs-downstairs dynamic she played the servant, the only time I recall her doing so.
Her 'family reunion' with Will and Jada at the Oscars was hilarious! :D
Ellsworth - Roger Michell's "Tea With The Dames" (aka "Nothing Like A Dame") is what you need to look for, if you want to listen to MS talking about acting (and many other fascinating topics).
Love her!
Amazing perfomances in The prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Califórnia Suite, A Room with a View, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Gosford Park.
I'm not the biggest fan of Smith, But I loved her in The V.I.P's and A Private Function, and she was splendid in Hook. As for Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Judi Dench showed that old-lady grande dame acting can be a lot more than quirky tics and fussy mannerisms.
"Fine. I'll do the damn movie but only if you write me off at the end" -- We all know she said that.
QUEEN
In the Dern vs López battle, I'm Team Maggie.
Kevin -- yup. Isn't that wild?
Team Maggie Smith for life. You just don't bet against her. Was it Roger Ebert who said: Don't act against children, animals or Maggie Smith.
Just putting a shout out to one of her (seemingly) minor roles in 1993's The Secret Garden (directed by Agnieszka Holland) as Mrs Medlock. She turns from harridan to motherly in seamless organic development.
Not a fan. Her debut is a bit in the otherwise good Phyllis Calvert-Mandy Miller film "A Child in the House"(1956). She only has a moment as a party guest but overplays it embarrassingly. Vanessa Redgrave created the Jean Brodie role onstage and I remember wishing as I watched the film in '69 that Redgrave had repeated onscreen. Luminous teenager Pamela Franklin easily eclipsed the leading lady. I agree Smith's fine in "The Lonely Passion..." but Deborah Kerr was attached to that project for years and I believe she'd have been ideal. Kerr had already nailed the sad dipsomaniac thing in 1949's "Edward My Son" and I can't help thinking how decades of experience would have seasoned her Judith Hearne.
Smith's comedy shtick just isn't for me. Her scene partner Michael Caine was the one who deserved the "California Suite" nomination. And her nomination for "Travels with My Aunt" I'd rank as one of the all-time least deserved. Saw her on stage years ago in "Private Lives" and she played the whole thing in that Paul Lynde/Alice Ghostley voice she so often resorts to to mine laughs. But I can't argue with the fact that millions love her. And I certainly won't be surprised to see her turn up among the Oscar nominees this year.
If Maggie gets in over the likes of Zhao Shuzhen in The Farewell it will be very disappointing:(
Agree with a lot of passion here for The Passion of Judith Hearne which I thought ranks among her very best. Love Room with a View and her in it. But she was also splendid in the obscure TV film called Memento Mori (written by Muriel Spark), and as one of the ladies in Tea with Mussolini.
The ending storyline in Downton is almost the same as her ending in Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
I adore her in the latter film - I would’ve nominated for Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
She presented the prizes for speech day at the school I used to teach at and gave some wonderful little vignettes about some of the films she worked on.
I hope she plays the Bette Davis role in the (unnecessary) Death on the Nile remake - It’ll be Miss Bower’s revenge!
Maggie Smith is gunning for a new Oscar record, one held by none other than Katharine Hepburn so far: Largest gap between first and last Oscar nomination. Hepburn has 48 years between Morning Glory and On Golden Pond, Smith would have 54 years between Othello and his one.
Also, it is exactly 50 years since Smith's Oscar win for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, so if she actually wins the Oscar, that would be another record snatched from Kate Hepburn; she would also have a new record for largest gap between two consecutive Oscars (it's been 41 years since her second Oscar, which would beat Helen Hayes' 39-year gap).
it's a pity she didn't get an Oscar nom in the 90s, though, as that prevents her from a shot at being the first person with acting nominations in six consecutive decades. (Meryl Streep is likely to snatch that one soon.)
No offense but Dame Maggie is terrible in Travels w My Aunt...Kate Hepburn must have been secretly happy tt she was fired from tt misfire!! Lol
A nom for Downrton Abbey will be a cap in the feather for Dame Maggie, but most voters wld tink haven we see this performance on TV before and haven she won truckload of prizes for it already.
I love dear old Mog, as Dame Judi calls her. Judith Hearne is an outstanding performance, so if anyone doubts her range or true ability, catch that film. I can't say I rank her Downton work too highly, but I would love if it she were nominated.
She won over Jane Fonda in '69, over Maureen Stapleton in '78 and the Tony over The Turner in 1990 and I don't hold a grudge against her.
QUEEN
I would have rather seen her win in lead for Judith Hearne.
Though she's good in Jean Brodie no one could touch Jane Fonda's work in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? but they were at different places in their careers at the time. Maggie already had a nom in her pocket, was coming off the highly successful Hot Millions and was very respected whereas Jane was just newly blowing the doors off her sexpot image, her previous film had been Barbarella, and faced with a performance that they thought might have been a fluke they went with the established Maggie and made Jane wait until she really came into her own with Klute.
But she's wonderful in California Suite and I'm glad she won for that .
She's almost always fantastic (she is completely at sea in Travels with My Aunt-UGH) and even if the film is somewhat wanting she snaps it up.
The image of her has become so ingrained as the acid tongued dowager, and why not she plays it so well, that it's somewhat refreshing to revisit her early work which has much more of a mixture of sweet and sour.
My faves of her work:
The V.I.P.S-Margaret Rutherford is a delight but Maggie brings the humanity to this lush, plush over the top soap.
The Honey Pot-What a cast! And Maggie gets to spar with most of them.
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing-I don't love the movie but she's very good in it.
California Suite
Death on the Nile-She, Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury inject just the right amount of ham into this somewhat flabby Agatha Christie outing.
Evil Under the Sun-When Maggie and the divine Diana Rigg at it hammer and tongs with verbal barbs it's heaven.
A Room with a View-Delightful
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
Sister Act-True the part doesn't ask much of her but she doesn't just coast but manages to make the Reverend Mother a worthy adversary for Whoopi.
Tea with Mussolini-Lady Hester is a difficult, imperious woman that thanks to Maggie you like anyway.
Gosford Park-Ditto for Constance
Quartet
Downton Abbey
I don't love The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and thought she was very studied in it but it's been a long time since I watched it so I should probably give it another chance.
Smith was just magnificent in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. Her best performance, along with Jean Brodie.
Absolutely love The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I remember the Oscar show that year and feeling annoyed that some foreigner won Best Actress (and wasn't even there!). Then a few months or years later and i watched it and was transfixed. I also watched it recently and can say it is a bravura performance by Dame Maggie!
She’s jaw droppingly good in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. One of the best Best Actress wins ever.