Dame Maggie Smith, known for her work in Downton Abbey and the Harry Potter films, has died at 89. Per the BBC, Smith’s sons, actors Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, broke the news in a statement released to the media on Friday morning. A cause of death has not yet been disclosed.
“It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith. She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September,” they wrote. “An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”
“We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days,” the statement continued. “We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time.”
A two-time Academy Award winner, Smith was revered for career-making roles across theater, film, and television, including her Oscar-winning turns in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and California Suite. Smith spent the better part of six decades on London’s West End and Broadway, where she portrayed Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell and Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and later gained favor with a new generation as she stepped into the witchy shoes of Professor Minerva McGonagall — a role she would occupy for a decade.
“There are times when I’m not even sure I have a real life,” Smith once told Life magazine, according to the Washington Post. “I know it’s only on the stage that I feel really alive. For a certain length of time I have to become a person whom I totally believe in. I would like to be somebody who is really beautiful.”
To pay homage to the late actress, we’ve rounded up some of Dame Maggie Smith’s most beloved on- and offscreen moments.