♪♪ ♪♪ -What's all this about?

-She's so intelligent and so kind of electric.

She's unsettling, Maggie Smith, in a really good way.

-What?

What was that you said?

-She doesn't look like a Hollywood star, but my God, she acts better than most of them.

-Me?

-Also, she is wickedly funny.

-Her range is phenomenal.

She got amazing comic timing, astonishing comic timing, but at the same time, this huge depth of emotion.

-If scandal is to your taste, Miss Mackay, I shall give you a feast.

-She is a superb craftswoman.

It is very, very difficult to do what she does.

She is a complete one-off.

Dame Maggie Smith.

♪♪ -Margaret Natalie Smith was born on December 28, 1934, in Ilford in Essex.

Her mother was Margaret.

Her father was Nathaniel.

He was a pathologist, and his work took him to Oxford when she was only four years old.

-Her father was from Newcastle and her mother was from Glasgow.

She would have grown up in a family that had very strong accents, which I think probably definitely gave her the facility for accents that she used later in her career.

-She had two brothers who were twins, and she didn't settle hugely into her family.

Her mother was quite disapproving.

She was quite stern, quite unforgiving, and Maggie discovered quite quickly that she liked acting, and her mother was always down on that and saying "You won't make a career with a face like that."

-Her mother, who was a secretary herself, who began as a secretary, didn't support Maggie in her desire to be an actress, her need to be an actress, and wanted her to be a secretary.

So she didn't get that sort of maternal support.

But it didn't stop her.

She carried on.

-She left school at 16, and she went to the Oxford Playhouse School, where she learned stagecraft and did all sorts of jobs.

-She became an ASM, an assistant stage manager at the Playhouse, and began to get parts.

So her training at the beginning wasn't drama school, rather this sort of immediate immersion into the Oxford theatrical world.

-Her first professional role was at the Oxford University Dramatics Society, where she played Viola in "Twelfth Night."

And by all accounts, she was a huge success.

I think she knew from a very early age, certainly her mid-teens, that this was the career path destined for her, that she had an instinct for it.

-But interestingly, you know, where she made her name early on was not in the classics.

It was in revue shows.

What were very fashionable, certainly in Oxford and in Cambridge at that time, were these sort of comedy skit shows, basically a series of sketches.

The starting point of of Maggie Smith's career was as a comedienne.

-And then very quickly in 1956, she was in a show called "New Faces of 1956," which actually went to Broadway for a few months.

So she got some really important experience in the theater from a very, very early age.

-In 1958, she's cast in a film called "Nowhere to Go."

It's about a guy who sprung from prison by his mates.

And he's on the run, and he's helped by this woman, a young woman who kind of is charmed by him and falls in love with him.

-Everything about me is wrong for you.

Just drop me off somewhere, and I'm sorry I called you.

-What do your friends call you?

Paul?

-Greg.

-All right, Greg.

Get out.

-If that's the way you want it.

-I want you to get in front with me.

-It's a small role, but it's a telling one for her because she makes a real impact on the screen.

She's completely convincing as the debutante.

And she's completely convincing in her role as a woman who falls in love with someone that she shouldn't do, and then refuses to betray him to the police.

-She plays that debutante very naturally, but she also has enough of reserve that you're not 100% certain which way she's going to go.

Is she going to turn him in?

Is she going to join with him?

I mean, right up until the very end.

-If they catch up with you, tell them I made you do it.

Tell them I had a gun.

-Don't worry.

I won't let you down.

Ciao, Greg.

-Ciao.

-Take care.

-That was a success for her.

But unfortunately, the film was cut and was put into the bottom half of a double bill and really disappeared from view.

-For her relatively small role in "Nowhere to Go," she was nominated as Most Promising Newcomer at the BAFTAs, so that's a really good start.

-In 1963, Maggie Smith joined Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and an all-star cast for "The V.I.P.s," a drama about a disparate group of people stranded in an airport.

-Maggie Smith plays the secretary to Rod Taylor, who is this Australian businessman who's got to get on that plane and get back or he loses his business.

It's a beautiful part.

And she is in love with him.

He doesn't know her.

He doesn't notice her.

She's nothing to him.

-Gee, I like your hair that way.

When did you change it?

-Oh, about three weeks ago.

-Well, let's have another go at this.

-I'll be squiffy.

-Marvelous.

That I should like to see, Miss Mead, just once.

I'm not talking about just once.

If I don't see it tonight, I suppose I never will.

-I'd work for you for nothing, you know.

-Yeah, I know.

-Eventually get this scene where Maggie Smith pleads with the wealthy Richard Burton for him to help her boss, Rod Taylor.

And famously, Burton said, she just, you know, it was grand larceny.

She stole the whole scene from him.

-And then someone let him down and he -- he had to write a check, and there's no money to cover it.

And now this fog.

I feel so sorry for him, Mr. Andros.

He's -- He's such a wonderful man.

And he's so young.

I'm so-- I'm sorry.

You must think I'm mad.

It's just that we've been through so much tonight.

You see, I -- I had some champagne.

-Does he know how much you love him?

-Who said I loved him?

It's -- It's the company.

-Yes.

I know they make wonderful tractors.

-She really makes her mark.

It's -- She's vulnerable.

She's frail.

She -- She's uncertain.

You just cannot take your eyes off it.

She's just extraordinary in it.

-I think now is the time for great things.

See, we've got peace in this country now.

We don't have to go in fear anymore.

We can turn to the human things and the beauty of the real things.

-Isn't love a real thing?

-Of course it is.

-Between us, isn't it real?

I'm shameless, but I'll say it.

I love you, Johnny.

-Can I kiss you?

-Here?

This city is our home.

Where else do you kiss the girl you love?

-"Young Cassidy" would re-team Maggie Smith with Rod Taylor, in which he plays the character John Cassidy, who is a version of Sean O'Casey, the real-life Irish playwright.

-Maggie Smith, in a -- in a way, could have been seen as a sort of just a pure, bland supporting character.

She is the woman he loves and who loves him.

She's the person that he's meant to be, his soulmate, but she realizes that her involvement in his life is going to prevent him from becoming the man he could be.

-Let me look at you.

My God, you must be the most beautiful woman in the world.

-Ah, those are just words.

-They are.

-You're clever with words, Johnny.

-I am.

-Then how can I believe them to be true?

-They say actions speak louder.

-It's a very, very vivacious performance.

It's physical.

She moves wonderfully.

Sort of almost dancing on the screen.

It's a -- It's an incredibly alive performance compared with the sort of rather buttoned-up, fragile ones of the first two movies, and it shows just how versatile she can be.

-Well, she got nominated by BAFTA for Best Actress in the film, so by now she was becoming known as a film star as well as a theatrical titan.

-In 1965, Maggie Smith appeared in the film version of "Othello," playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier's brooding Moor, role they had already performed together on stage at the National Theatre.

-Heaven forfend, I would not kill thy soul.

-Talk you of killing?

-Aye, I do.

-Then heaven have mercy on me.

-Amen.

With all my heart.

-If you say so, I hope you will not kill me.

And yet I fear you.

Why I should fear I know not since guiltiness I know not.

And yet I feel I fear.

-Think on thy sins.

-But they are loves I bear to you.

-And for that, thou diest.

-That death's unnatural, that kills for love -- -Peace and be still!

-She does actually give a tremendous performance as Desdemona.

It's -- It's a wonderful combination of innocence and intelligence.

Clearly, she makes her Desdemona someone who has got a real spirit inside her.

-It's a splendid version of "Othello."

If you set aside its political incorrectness in how it's done, it is a very good version, and I think that's especially true of Maggie Smith's Desdemona.

You know, she was, at the time, both very beautiful, yet sort of strangely porcelain and fragile, like something that could easily break.

And that was perfect for Desdemona.

-Laurence Olivier didn't -- I mean, he said that he thought she was too common after they'd made the film.

The question is, how much of that is -- I mean, he still had acted with her on the stage, and he picked her to play the part in the film.

But looking back on it now, I mean, you know, his performance looks a little bit ludicrous and her performance looks very measured and gentle.

So in the end, she made the better film.

-Now, it couldn't be done the way the film was done then, but it was highly praised in some quarters and almost laughed at in others.

Not for Maggie Smith, but for Larry Olivier.

She got her first Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for Desdemona.

So she was beginning to get known very much in America as well.

-Who has done this deed?

-Nobody.

I myself.

Commend me to my kind lord.

-Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders.

And all my pupils are the crème de la crème.

Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.

You girls are my vocation.

If I were to receive a proposal of marriage tomorrow from the Lord Lyon, King of Arms, I would decline it.

I am dedicated to you in my prime.

And my summer in Italy has convinced me that I am truly in my prime.

-The film for which Maggie Smith is best remembered in the kind of front half of her career, is, of course, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie."

Now, the story follows this striking, unconventional teacher in an Edinburgh junior girls school.

And she's a real kind of strange mix.

She's sort of passionate yet slightly off-kilter with her views.

She adores, you know, Mussolini's Italy.

She kind of idolizes it.

-So she picks out her favorite girls and she tries to encourage them to think differently but move towards the fascist cause, which is complicated for us to watch, because on the one hand, she's got the maverick style that, you know, we appreciate.

On the other hand, she keeps, you know, turning to Franco, Mussolini as her examples.

-Not only is she sort of politically sort of rather dodgy, she is a woman who is desperately in search of love.

And you can tell that underneath this rather sort of reckless, irresponsible, but inspiring teacher, and she's all those things, is someone who is really quite vulnerable.

-Miss Brodie!

-I am a teacher.

I am a teacher first, last, always.

Do you imagine that for one instant I will let that be taken from me without a fight?

I have dedicated, sacrificed my life to this profession.

And I will not stand by like an inky little slacker and watch you rob me of it.

And for what?

For what reason?

For jealousy.

Because I have the gift of claiming girls for my own.

It is true.

I am a strong influence on my girls.

I am proud of it.

-It is monumental and knocks people out.

Because you sit there and you're watching Maggie Smith play this teacher and you love her.

She's fantastic.

She's a teacher everybody wants, but she's a monster.

-Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, Italy's leader supreme, a Roman worthy of his heritage.

The greatest Roman of them all.

The Colosseum, where Christian slaves were thrown to the lions and gladiators fought to the death.

Ave Imperator, morituri te salutamus.

Hail, Caesar!

Those who are about to die salute thee.

-But it became a smash hit.

Critically adored and would land her a Best Actress Oscar.

-...In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus.

-Who are we cremating?

-A Mrs. Pooley.

-Oh, good.

-"Travels With My Aunt" is a film based on a Graham Greene novel, which is essentially a hijinks caper, with a kind of family tragedy built in to the heart of it.

Maggie Smith is this eccentric aunt who meets her nephew at his mother's funeral, and she persuades him to come with her on a voyage around Europe.

-You must learn to surrender yourself to extravagance, Henry.

Poverty is apt to strike suddenly, like influenza.

Ah.

-Maggie Smith gives it absolutely everything.

She has the energy of a teenager.

She's made up relatively convincingly to be 70.

There are sort of flashbacks to when she was a younger woman.

And you can see then, of course, the real Maggie Smith.

But you also see the seeds of Aunt Augusta and what she's become.

-When I picked you up in London, I-I-I could scarcely see you, your presence was so very dim, and you presume to despise, grubbing about with your tubers.

You've -- You've risked nothing, given nothing, suffered nothing, lost nothing, loved nothing.

You -- You've even dreamed nothing.

You -- You take care, Henry.

I am your last chance at life.

Take me or leave me.

-I feel like she's the opposite of Mary Poppins.

She's chaotic and insane, and that's what attracts him in the end.

And that's where -- That's where their bond is formed.

-It is a classic Maggie Smith performance where she suddenly turns into this other creature, and she's nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for this.

-In 1978, Maggie Smith joined an all-star cast for "Death on the Nile," which starred Peter Ustinov as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot.

-So that's the Ridgeway girl.

-What are you studying so closely?

Her picture or her pearls?

-Keep a civil tongue in your head, Bowers, or you will be out of a job.

-What do I care?

This town is filled with rich old widows willing to pay for a little groveling and a body massage.

You go ahead and fire me.

-Temper, temper, Bowers.

-"Death on the Nile" was following in the footsteps of "Murder on the Orient Express" as one of these all-star versions of Agatha Christie's most famous novels.

You get David Niven, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, and you get Maggie Smith as Miss Bowers, the nurse.

-Now, you know, to get to stand up against Bette Davis in her prime, in her veteran prime is really something.

She does a magnificent job.

They actually strike sparks off of each other.

You can almost see the sparks flying across the screen.

She's very, very waspish.

It brings out the great -- her great element of comic riposte.

-You have got to forgive Miss Bowers.

She's just unfamiliar with the married state.

-I saw you drooling over her pearls.

-Shut up, Bowers.

-You'd give every tooth in your head to lay your hands on them.

-What nonsense!

Just because you've got a grudge against her, or rather, her father.

No need to be uncivil.

-Grudge?

Melhuish Ridgeway ruined my family.

-Well, you should be grateful.

If he hadn't, you'd have missed the pleasure of working for me.

-I could kill her on that score alone.

-It's one of those "Maggie Smith steals every scene she's in" performances.

And she's nominated for a BAFTA as Best Supporting Actress.

-Sidney, I have just thrown up on some of the best people in Hollywood.

Now is no time to be sensitive.

What was the Best Picture?

-I'm not telling you.

-I'm not asking you.

I'm threatening you, you crud!

-Now I'm definitely not going to tell you.

-I'm sorry.

I take it back, Sidney.

You're not a crud.

-In "California Suite," she plays one half of a quarreling couple with Michael Caine.

It is an adaptation, of course, of the stage play by Neil Simon.

-I love "California Suite."

It's one of my favorite Maggie Smith movies.

It's just a lovely film about actors and Hollywood, and marriages.

But with that fantastic kind of Neil Simon fast-talking comedy that's sort of edged a little with tragedy as well.

-The hotel is in Beverly Hills, and so Maggie Smith and Michael Caine, who plays her husband, arrive there because Maggie Smith is playing a British actress who has been nominated for an Oscar for a small independent film.

And she doesn't think she's going to win, but she knows that it's an opportunity.

So she's nervous and she's tense and excited and at the same time terrified.

But whilst they're there, you see their relationship begin to fall very delicately apart.

-Do you think I don't know what you're saying?

I can spell, you know.

-Not without moving your lips, you can't.

I would like another drink, please.

-You drank everything in this state.

Try Nevada.

-The level of the repartee and the fullness of it and the humor of it is just hugely funny.

I mean, she is an extremely vain actress.

-I've aged, Sidney.

I'm getting lines in my face.

I look like a brand-new steel-belted radial tire.

-It's full of the most wonderful lines.

Neil Simon at his absolute best.

And he's got two of the greatest practitioners in comic dialogue working for him.

How can it fail?

-Right, you can take the pig.

-We're not taking the pig.

-Do you want the pig or don't you?

-Joyce, can I go to the toilet?

-Of course, Mother.

There's no need to ask.

74.

-11 11s are a -- -Go to the toilet, Mother.

-"A Private Function" is a film just set just after the war.

Alan Bennett script, very, very funny, about a chiropodist played by Michael Palin, who is married to Maggie Smith, who feels that she has married beneath her.

Through a complicated series of events, somehow takes charge of a live pig, which they intend to slaughter and use for this grand dinner to celebrate the Queen's coronation.

-And in Alan Bennett's sort of eyes, this is really a story of class conflict, you know?

The more food you can provide as part of the celebration, the further up the kind of tree of class you are.

-I want a hand.

We've got to get it upstairs.

-Well, I'm dressed up.

-I have a hernia.

Oh.

My brother-in-law has a hernia.

What a charming man.

-Oh, my poor, dear girl, you are so young and you've always lived among such nice people.

You cannot realize what men can be.

This afternoon, for example, if I had not arrived, what would have happened?

-I can't think.

-Answer me, Lucia!

What would have happened if I had not appeared?

-You did appear.

-"A Room With a View" is the beginning of a particular stage in Maggie Smith's career, which is where she plays someone who is quite tightly laced in a more open and complicated environment.

So it's a Merchant-Ivory film.

Helena Bonham Carter is not quite free spirited, but she certainly had a less than typical Edwardian upbringing.

There was a certain level of freedom in her life, and she goes to France with her cousin, who is the very, very upright, strict, and haughty chaperone Maggie Smith.

-It's a wonderful performance by Maggie Smith because we balance off and she balances off the sort of newness of this young girl who's starting to understand her life and falling in love with a man who's not considered proper by her family.

-Mr. Emerson says it's all his fault.

-Because I told him to trust her love.

I told him, "George, love and do what you will."

It's what I taught him.

So you see, it is all my fault.

-Where are you going?

-Well, your dear mother most kindly offered to fetch me in her carriage.

And I have not been brought up to keep anyone waiting.

Least of all a kind hostess.

-She is wonderful in it.

She is nervous, uptight, very respectable, trying to do her best to keep her increasingly willful charge under control.

And is completely -- is constantly being confronted by, you know, problems.

-I have a theory that there is something in the Italian landscape which inclines even the most stolid nature to romance.

-It reminds me so much of the country around Shropshire, where I once spent a holiday at the home of my friend Miss Amesbury.

-And I divine it, Charlotte, you had an adventure there?

Fain to deny it.

-Lovely film, great performance, and an enormous hit.

-She wins the BAFTA for Best Actress, and she is nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

-She played for Jack Clayton, British director, in "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne," which was a serious film really about a spinster who has never had a decent relationship in her life and has always been sort of in the background to every part of society she moves in.

-And she plays this piano teacher in 1950s Dublin who's approaching middle age alone, unloved, and desperate for some warmth from the world, desperate for a chance at happiness.

-I've been waiting for you.

Years I've been waiting, years, every one of them 12 months.

Praying for it.

Hoping.

A woman never gives up her hopes.

There's always a Mr.

Right, they say.

Changing as the years, the years go by.

Well, you know, he's tall, dark, and handsome in the beginning.

And then, well, you're not so young and he's middle aged and funny looking and common as dirt and -- To have anybody, and anybody so much as a kind word, then that's your prince sent to keep you from being alone.

And love?

Don't talk.

That's forgotten.

You're just supposed to take him even though you know, you know he doesn't want you.

All he wants is an American quick lunch.

-I've rarely seen such an extraordinarily moving performance in any film, actually, which is so consistent and so authentic.

-Don't I remember that particularly ostentatious vehicle?

Oh, no, it can't be.

-I think so.

Mrs. Morganthal is back.

Should we invite her to tea?

-I think not.

Americans simply don't understand picnics.

-"Tea with Mussolini," directed by Franco Zeffirelli, is in more ways than many a kind of biopic of Zeffirelli's own sort of life during wartime.

Here's this boy abandoned by his father because he's born out of wedlock and left by his mother as well.

So he's something of an orphan, and he's taken under the wing of his aunt and this collection of older ladies who were known as the Scorpio, who have come to Florence to kind of take in the sunshine and the landscape and learn of art and culture.

-Oh, do look, oh, look, look, look at that ridiculous American monstrosity they've given the child.

What do they call them?

Knickerbocker glories.

Oh.

It's amazing, you know, they can even vulgarize ice cream.

-Don't worry.

We're all taking care of him.

-Are you sure you know what you're doing?

It's one thing to take care of stray dogs.

It's quite another to take care of stray boys.

-And the sort of conceit of it is one of the women brags "Oh, nothing's going to happen to us because I've had tea with Mussolini."

Well, actually, the opposite happens.

-The film has a kind of a sunny aspect to it at first clouded over by the war, which was one of Zeffirelli's best achievements.

-Aren't you rather letting yourself go?

-Give me the Goddamn message, Hester.

-His message is perfectly clear.

Mary tells me you've signed everything over to him.

All your property.

All your property?

-Yes.

-And all your money?

-Yes.

-Well, now he has everything you possess, he wants you arrested and probably dead.

He won't be coming here, Elsa.

He's keeping well away.

He's leaving everything to the Gestapo.

But I have a passport.

-The passport is worth nothing.

Georgie says it's a death warrant.

-I'm scared.

-Yes.

Well, yes, of course you are.

Of course you are.

We all are.

Luca will help you.

He and his friends.

My grandson is with them.

They will help you out of Italy.

You must get ready, please.

-She's kind of a very commanding character.

She holds the group together even as war breaks out around them, and she will not leave.

Actually, Zeffirelli based her, based the Maggie Smith character, on someone he knew in, you know, his childhood.

She was an exact replica of someone who dominated the the village that he grew up in.

-In 2001, Maggie Smith was introduced to a legion of new young audiences when she played Professor Minerva McGonagall in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone."

-Whew, we made it.

Can you imagine the look on old McGonagall's face if we were late?

That was bloody brilliant.

-Well, thank you for that assessment, Mr. Weasley.

Perhaps it would be more useful if I were to transfigure Mr. Potter and yourself into a pocket watch.

That way one of you might be on time.

-We got lost.

-Then perhaps a map.

I trust you don't need one to find your seats.

-"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," right from the very beginning was going to be an enormous event as a studio film.

You know, J.K. Rowling's books had become more than a sensation.

They had become a kind of phenomenon.

And it was a kind of a matter of when, not if, you know, a whole franchise was going to be born from them.

-I can't honestly say that there is anyone else in the film who gives me such pleasure when I watch the Harry Potter films.

She is everything you would want to have in a professor of magic.

She was the sort of teacher that I wished I had had when I was in school, and she could do magic.

She is stern.

She is loving.

She is tremendously funny.

And at the end of the day, she is unbelievably courageous.

-We have to see Professor Dumbledore immediately.

-I'm afraid Professor Dumbledore is not here.

He received an urgent call from the Ministry of Magic and left immediately for London.

-He's gone?

But this is important.

This is about the Philosopher's Stone.

-How do you know -- -Someone's going to try and steal it.

-I don't know how you three found out about the stone, but I assure you it is perfectly well protected.

Now, would you go back to your dormitories quietly?

-She plays a professor in the film.

She continued to play that in succeeding films.

It was one of her great triumphs, because it was such a popular film that even the people who didn't know of Maggie Smith knew of her after that, after those films, quite extraordinary.

-Hogwarts is threatened.

Man the boundaries.

Protect us.

Do your duty to our school.

I've always wanted to use that spell.

-It's rather a mixed bunch.

Mr. Weissman is very odd.

Apparently he produces motion pictures.

The Charlie Chan mysteries.

Or does he direct them?

I never know the difference.

-Really?

I enjoy those, milady.

-Mary.

I suppose it's fun having a film star staying.

There's always so little to talk about after the first flush of recognition.

Why has Freddie Nesbitt bought that awful common little wife of his?

Isobel only asked him because a gun dropped out.

That's no excuse to inflict her on us all.

Mary.

-"Gosford Park," I think, is the film that Maggie Smith treasures most in the latter half of her career.

She adored making it.

She adored Robert Altman.

-It's like a sort of epic Agatha Christie movie.

It's sort of part "Upstairs, Downstairs."

It's part murder mystery.

When you've got that many characters sort of both upstairs and downstairs, it's really, really hard to make a mark.

Maggie Smith, of course, makes the mark.

-Mr. Weissman, tell us about the film you're going to make.

-Oh, sure.

It's called "Charlie Chan in London."

It's a detective story.

-Set in London.

-Well, not really.

Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house.

Sort of like this one, actually.

A murder in the middle of the night.

A lot of guests for the weekend.

Everyone's a suspect.

You know, that sort of thing.

-How horrid.

And who turns out to have done it?

-Oh, I couldn't tell you that.

It -- It would spoil it for you.

-Oh, but none of us will see it.

-[ Chuckles ] -She's very, very funny.

She's got to the stage now where she can do this stuff effortlessly.

-In 2010, Maggie Smith reunited with "Gosford Park's" writer Julian Fellowes for what would become an international sensation, "Downton Abbey."

-The entail must be smashed in its entirety and Mary recognized as heiress of all.

-There's nothing we can do about the title.

-No.

She can't have the title.

But she can have your money and the estate.

-Maggie Smith plays the Dowager Countess of Grantham, who has to watch her son marry an American artist who brings her fortune to save this great house.

-And she brings to that all, all her sort of history of playing high-born ladies, all the spikiness of her previous sort of comic personae.

And it's all sort of distilled into this one extraordinary creature.

-Mama, may I present Matthew Crawley and Mrs. Crawley.

My mother, Lady Grantham.

-What should we call each other?

-Well, we could always start with Mrs. Crawley and Lady Grantham.

-Come into the drawing room, and we can make all the proper introductions.

Thank you.

-She's the grandest figure that Julian Fellowes could come up with.

And she is a brute, you know.

Her put-downs are legendary.

I think, you know, honestly, that 70% of the success of "Downton Abbey" is down to Maggie Smith and how much fun she is.

People tune in, especially in America, to get a bit of Maggie.

-24 years ago, you married Cora, against my wishes, for her money.

Give it away now, and what was the point of your peculiar marriage in the first place?

-If I were to tell you she'd made me very happy, would that stretch belief?

-It's not why you chose her.

-It's a very, very well executed, beautiful piece of television.

It's hugely successful.

And to some degree has become the role that most people associate with Maggie Smith.

It's a great set of characters, but you're waiting all the time for her to deliver her verdict because there's just something -- he loves writing for her, and she loves delivering those lines.

-I'm glad she's staying.

But one forgets about parenthood.

The on and on-ness of it.

-Were you a very involved mother with Robert and Rosamund?

-Does it surprise you?

-A bit.

I'd imagined them surrounded by nannies and governesses, being starched and ironed to spend an hour with you after tea.

-Yes, but it was an hour every day.

-I see, yes.

-She is absolutely what Richard Burton said.

She is -- She is, you know, a thief.

She is a scene stealer.

She can't help it.

I'm sure she doesn't do it deliberately.

She just can't help herself.

-You need a new hip, Mrs. Donnelly.

It's not a difficult operation.

-Well, that's easy for you to say.

You're not having it.

-Regardless, you do need a new hip.

-I'm not getting it from you.

-Not me personally, no.

-No, none of your lot.

-I see.

-When do I have the operation?

-I'm afraid you'll be on the waiting list for at least six months.

-At my age, I can't plan that far ahead.

I don't even buy green bananas.

-2012 is "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."

This is John Madden's film about a group of pensioners who decide they're going to have this glorious retirement in India.

Maggie Smith is coming to get a hip operation.

-And they go there to kind of rebuild broken lives.

Each of the characters to some extent has arrived at the Marigold Hotel, run by the wonderful Dev Patel, you know, to try and fix something.

-Would you like some of this?

I believe it's called aloo ka paratha.

-No, if I can't pronounce it, I don't want to eat it.

-Charming film.

Really, really funny.

Again, Maggie Smith plays the slight refusenik.

The one who sort of some half wants to do it, but then can't cope with the change of the culture.

-It's like a sort of a modern-day fairy tale in a way, but very winning.

-Mrs. Hardcastle, you'll stay.

-On my own?

Oh, no, you're off your game, dear.

-Lost your confidence, maybe?

But you know, you are a thoroughbred.

You'll be back.

-In 2015, Maggie Smith reprised her performance of Miss Mary Shepherd in Alan Bennett's "The Lady in the Van," a role she had played to great acclaim on the stage.

-Miss Shepherd, in future, I would prefer it if you didn't use my lavatory.

There are lavatories at the bottom of the high street.

Use those.

-They smell.

I'm by nature a very clean person.

I have a testimonial for a clean room awarded me some years ago.

And you know, my aunt, herself spotless, said I was the cleanest of all my mother's children, particularly in the unseen places.

-Oh.

-It's the story, true story of the writer Alan Bennett, who met a homeless woman with a van and allowed her to park the van on his driveway in Camden for 15 years.

-Maggie Smith plays the old girl in the van who was once a concert pianist but had given everything up to live in this van in old, tattered clothes, was definitely very eccentric.

-Where will you park it?

-In the residents parking.

-We haven't got a permit.

-Yeah, I have.

Yes, I got one yesterday.

-But you never told me.

-Well, you'd only have raised objections if I had.

-Have you insured it?

-I don't need insuring.

It's like the van.

I'm insured in heaven.

-So who pays if you have an accident?

The Pope?

-Maggie Smith just had a ball, you know, playing this terrible woman, you know, who was just a force of chaos, but wonderfully kind of voluble and eccentric and feisty.

You know, no one does sort of indignant rage quite as well as Maggie Smith.

And poor Miss Shepherd is a vessel of indignant rage.

-Having played a series of very high-born aristocratic women, I mean, increasingly so, to actually then come right down to sort of street level in sort of messy old clothes, anything like that you'd think would be a slightly -- it's a slightly actress-y thing to do to sort of prove that you could do it.

Of course, Maggie Smith at this stage doesn't have to prove anything.

She's got nothing left to prove.

She just gives a performance.

And one of the great performances of her late career.

-If I should want to get in touch with you, whom should I call?

-Well, you can try Mr. Bennett at 23.

Only don't take any notice of what he says.

He's a -- He's a communist, possibly.

-Maggie Smith has had an extraordinary career and still continues to have one both in the theater and film.

-That's me, lost causes and lame ducks.

-She seems to have managed to have gone from a very interesting ingenue through more mature roles, right up into a sort of veteran status with absolutely no effort whatsoever.

-Goodness, truth, and beauty come first.

-Every time you watch her, you should look closely, because there's always so much more going on than perhaps the part even suggests.

-It seems bitter to miss such a good pudding.

-And she is quite honestly one of Britain's national treasures, and long may she remain so.

-Oh, Sidney!

I saw your privates.

-Time will show that she is one of the greatest actors who ever lived, and she is still going strong.

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