Dame Maggie Smith, star of ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Downton Abbey’, has died aged 89

• British actor Dame Maggie Smith has died aged 89, her family have confirmed.
• The actor has had a storied career on both stage and screen, winning Tony, Emmy and Oscar awards.
• Smith was well known for his roles in the television series “Downton Abbey” and the “Harry Potter” films.

Dame Maggie Smith, the legendary British actor best known for her roles in “Harry Potter” and “Downton Abbey,” has died, her family confirmed to Business Insider in a statement sent by Smith’s agent.

She was 89 years old.

“She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday September 27,” her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin said in a statement. “An extremely private person, she was with friends and family at the end.”

Born in 1934, Smith’s prominent career began on the stage at the Oxford Playhouse when she was 17. She made her Broadway debut in 1956 and earned three Tony nominations throughout her career, winning one in 1990 for “Lettice and Lovage.”

Her screen career began to develop in the 1950s and she earned her first British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nomination in 1958 for Nowhere to Go. A six-time Oscar nominee, Smith won twice: in 1970 for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and then in 1979 for “California Suite.” Smith later became known for playing Professor Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” films, a role she said helped her bond with her grandchildren.

The actor also had a notable career in television and won her first Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Delahunty in the 2003 HBO television film My House in Umbria.

But her most prolific TV role was as Violet Crawley on “Downton Abbey,” which earned her three Emmy Awards. The series ran for six seasons, and Smith returned for two subsequent “Downton Abbey” movies, which were released in 2019 and 2022.

Smith was honored with a dame in 1990 and joined colleagues Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright for a landmark documentary called ‘Tea With the Dames’ in 2018.

In 2019, after a decade-long absence from the theatre, she returned to the stage to star in Sir Christopher Hampton’s one-woman play A German Life. She played the role of Brunhilde Pomsel, the secretary of Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

Smith was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disease affecting the thyroid, in 1988. She underwent radiation therapy and eye surgery to stop eye protrusions that occurred as a result of the disease. She was later diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and underwent chemotherapy while filming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

She married Sir Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, actors Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin. Smith and Stephens divorced in April 1975, and two months later, Smith married playwright Alan Beverley Cross. They remained married until his death in March 1998.

Smith is survived by his two sons and five grandchildren “who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” the family said in a statement.

Anjelica Oswald contributed to an earlier version of this story.