Biography
Early life
Smith was born in Ilford in Essex, the daughter of Margaret Hutton
Little, who was Scottish, and
Nathaniel Smith, a Newcastle-born
public health pathologist who worked at Oxford University.[1][2][3] She has two older twin
brothers, Alistair and Ian. Smith studied at Oxford High School, although
she has been quoted as not having enjoyed the experience, at a time when Lady Antonia
Fraser would have been amongst her peers.
Career
Smith has had an extensive career both on screen and in live theatre, and is
known as one of Britain's pre-eminent actresses. She began her career at the Oxford Playhouse with
Frank Shelley, and
made her first film in 1956. She became a fixture at the Royal
National Theatre in the 1960s, most notably for playing Desdemona in Othello opposite Laurence Olivier, and winning her first Oscar nomination when she
immortalized her performance in the 1965 film version. In 1969 she won the
Academy Award for Best Actress
for her performance as an unorthodox Scottish schoolteacher in The Prime of Miss Jean
Brodie, a role originally created on stage by Vanessa Redgrave in
1966. She was also awarded the 1978 Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actress for her role as the brittle actress, Diana Barrie, in
California
Suite acting opposite Michael Caine. Afterwards, Caine is supposed to
have humorously telephoned Michael Palin on hearing that Palin was about to
embark on a film (The
Missionary) with Smith, warning him she would steal the film .
Smith appeared in Sister
Act in 1992, and had a major role in the 1999 film Tea With
Mussolini, where she appeared as the formidable Lady Hester. Indeed,
many of her more mature roles have centred on what Smith refers to as her
"gallery of grotesques", playing waspish, sarcastic or plain rude characters.
Recent examples of this would include the judgemental sister in Ladies in
Lavender and the cantankerous snob in Gosford Park for which she received yet
another Oscar nomination.
Other notable roles include the querulous Charlotte Bartlett in the Merchant-Ivory production of A
Room with a View and a vivid supporting turn as the aged Duchess of York
in Ian McKellen's film of
Richard III. Given the
international success of the Harry Potter movies, she is widely known in
the role of Professor Minerva McGonagall. She most recently
appeared in Harry Potter
and The Order of the Phoenix, released in July 2007.
In the 1970s Smith moved to Canada to
find a new direction in both her career and in her personal life, as she had
recently divorced.[citation needed]
On stage, her many roles include the title character in the stage production
of Alan Bennett's Lady
in the Van and starring as Peter
Pan[citation needed] in
J. M. Barrie's fairytale
story Peter Pan. She
later played Wendy in the Peter Pan adaption Hook. She won a Tony Award in 1990 for Best Actress in a Play for
Lettice and Lovage, starring as an eccentric tour guide in an English
stately home. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
in 1970, and was raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1990.
Personal life
Smith has been married twice. She married Robert Stephens on 29 June 1967, at
the Greenwich Registry office and had two sons with him: actors Chris Larkin (born 1967) and
Toby Stephens (born
1969). They divorced on 6 May 1974.
She married Beverley
Cross (on 23 August 1975 at Guildford Registry Office) and the marriage ended
with his death on 20 March 1998. At the time of his death she was
appearing in A
Delicate Balance at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket but
continued to the end of the run.
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