Dame Margaret Natalie Smith is an English actress. With an extensive career on screen and stage beginning in the mid-1950s, Smith has appeared in over 60 films and 70 plays. She is one of the few artists to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting", having received highest achievement for film, television and theatre, winning two Academy Awards, a Tony Award and four Primetime Emmy Awards. She is also a recipient of various accolades including seven BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and five Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 1996 she was honored with the BAFTA Fellowship. Hailed as one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actresses, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 for contributions to the Arts, and a Companion of Honour in 2014 for services to Drama.
Smith began her career on stage as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional debut on Broadway in New Faces of '56. For her work on the London stage, she has won a record six Best Actress Evening Standard Awards for The Private Ear and The Public Eye (both 1962), Hedda Gabler (1970), Virginia (1981), The Way of the World (1984), Three Tall Women (1994), and A German Life (2019). She received Tony Award nominations for Private Lives (1975) and Night and Day (1979), before winning the 1990 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage. She appeared in Stratford Shakespeare Festival productions of Antony and Cleopatra (1976) and Macbeth (1978), and West End productions of A Delicate Balance (1997) and The Breath of Life (2002). She received the Society of London Theatre Special Award in 2010.
On screen, Smith first drew praise for the crime film Nowhere to Go (1958), for which she received her first nomination for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award. She received her first Academy Award nomination for her role in Laurence Olivier's Othello (1965) before winning for Best Actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). She was nominated soon after for the comedy Travels with My Aunt (1972) before winning her second Academy Award this time for Best Supporting Actress for California Suite (1978). She is one of only seven actresses to have won in both categories. She has received two other nominations for James Ivory's A Room with a View (1985), and Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001). Smith gained international acclaim for her role as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2011). Her other notable film roles include Death on the Nile (1978), Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), Richard III (1995), First Wives Club (1996), Tea with Mussolini (1999), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), Quartet (2012) and The Lady in the Van (2015).
Smith is also known for her extensive work in television. During the late 1950s through the 1990s, Smith has performed in various filmed stage productions on Sunday Night Theatre, Armchair Theatre. Talking Heads, Screen Two and Playhouse. She made her American television debut on The Carol Burnett Show in 1975 and appeared multiple times on the show. She received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for David Copperfield (1999), and Capturing Mary (2006), winning for My House in Umbria (2003). She gained newfound fame as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, on Julian Fellowes's period series Downton Abbey (2010–2015), for which she won three Primetime Emmy Awards, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Golden Globe. She reprised the role in the films Downton Abbey (2019), and Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022).
