Favorite Maggie Smith Performance?

She IS Maggie Smith!

LUCY!

OP Every Single Fucking One.

I always liked her as Mrs. Trotwood in David Copperfield

Maggie Smith and Eric Porter starred in Man and Superman from 1968.

Don't forget her camping it up in Evil Under the Sun, also starring Diana Rigg, James Mason, Nicholas Clay, Roddy McDowell, Sylvia Miles, Dennis Quilley, Jane Birkin, Colin Blakely, and Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot.

She's great fun in [italic]Gosford Park[/italic], but her performance in [italic]the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie[/italic] is masterful.

She was so louche in California Suite.

OP, the title of the movie is “The [bold] Prime [/bold] of Miss Jean Brodie.”

Hi, Greg.

Hello, R10

It’s Constance, Countess of Trentham, you heathen.

Her best, for me, was in Lettice and Lovage onstage in London.

And you may refer to me as the Dowager Countess of Grantham, thank you very much.

[quote] OP, the title of the movie is “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”

[quote] It’s Constance, Countess of Trentham, you heathen.

R12 from the below-linked thread:

[quote] OP has the taste of a 18 year old discovering "culture" for the first time.

A fond memory...

Muriel Donnelley

Love her in The First Wives Club!

I'm surprised The Secret Garden is getting more votes

Annnnnd.... the correct answer is, of course: Judith Hearne in "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne."

Thank you, OP, for playing, We have some nice consolation prizes for you.

She was quite jealous of Bette Midler.

I always thought it was the “Prime” of Miss Jean Brodie. So embarrassed. Gobsmacked to learn she was in a Superman movie from the ‘60s!🤪

What about her turn as Dora Charleston in MURDER BY DEATH?

"Oh Dickie, that's tacky!"

I was a sixteen-year old girl in 1969, and when TPOMJB was released and I first saw it, I was enchanted. First of all, I looked much like Sandy, with dark-rimmed glasses and long brown hair and a frequently sour expression. Secondly, I'm an Anglophile so I adored the setting (yes, Scotland is not England, I know).

Went back to see it a half-dozen times over the course of a week and a half. She's been my favorite actress ever since, and I see every of one of her movies and TV shows. I so wish I had made the effort to see her on stage!

Call me a philistine, I know - but the only thing I've seen her in is Downton Abbey. I had no idea she was so attractive in her younger years.

[quote] Call me a philistine, I know - but the only thing I've seen her in is Downton Abbey.

And you call yourself a senior lesbian?

Jesus wept.

Wait for her exit it's an amazing movement as an actor. Angry, embarrassed, proud and awkwardly comical. Bravo!

The Millionairess...

She is sublime in almost everything- different characters always distinctly her own. Thank you for that over the top bit of romantic interlude from Room With a View. Lordy that carriage driver and Puccini! And Maggie sitting on the ground. Wonderful film.

Her talent intimidated Bette Davis in Death On The Nile.

I first saw her as Rod Taylor's lovelorn secretary in The V.I.P.s as a nine year old gay in training.....I have been a fan ever since!

We could have easily listed ten more performances to choose from at OP's list.

I did volunteer work with a young gay who only knew her from Downton, Harry Potter, and one of those Best Collection of Old British Farts in India movies.

I told him - badgered him for a few weeks, actually - to watch Brodie and/or California Suite. To start out with, anyway.

After he watched them.....he was near tears telling me how fantastic she was, that he couldn't believe how good those performances were. "I am shook!"

Hay Fever

Gunilla Garson Goldberg "First Wives Club"...."fork".

No love for Sister Act?

Two of my favorites are the title character in THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE (which I believe is one of Smith's favorites) and as Lila in the little-seen LOVE AND PAIN AND THE WHOLE DAMN THING.

The latter film is just OK and you have to put up with a whiny Timothy Bottoms, but Smith is lovely in the film and it's one of her least mannered performances.

When she's ultra-mannered, as in TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, she's beyond annoying.

...lovely war

Agree. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is one of her best

Maggie's good in a supporting role in The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

She was really funny in A Private Function with Michael Palin.

The rest of the British character actor royalties- Pete Postlethwaite, Bill Paterson, Liz Smith, Richard Griffiths, Jim Carter, John Normington, Tony Hagarth, and Mr. Denholm Elliott.

The best scene in the film is when Palin refuses to murder a pig, so Smith steps in to the work. She ends up chasing it around the house. Hilarious.

Not on the list: My House in Umbria (2003)

2nd: Evil Under the Sun

3rd: Gosford Park

4th: The V.I.P.s

It is really something to look over her career in retrospective, because she made so few bad movies and made so many fantastic ones.

Miss Collins.

the full episode

With Bette Davis in Death on the Nile (1978)

Since they were filming on the actual Nile, the two had to share a dressing room with Angela Lansbury.

I'm really glad Harry Potter is not winning

Dickie … the list is incomplete without Murder by Death!

It's rumored that Neil Simon wrote her piece on California Suite after she lost the Oscar for Travels with My Aunt to Liza. Liv Ullman said in her autobiography that Smith had to be escorted from the theater because she was so distraught.

Travels with My Aunt is so bad. And this directed by Cukor and Smith camping it up. Torture.

[quote]Liv Ullman said in her autobiography that Smith had to be escorted from the theater because she was so distraught.

Sure, Jan...and Liv.

I found out I was straight when I went to see Smith give a tour de force performance in Miss Jean Brodie and came out only thinking of the naked Pamela Franklin.

R25, you MUST watch Gosford Park! You'll thank me later.

I didn't realize there were any differences in her performances (which I love), except for slight modifications based on characters' class status.

I love her but her role in DA is very one note and almost a reprise from Gosford. Granted not her fault, there is almost no character except to sneer. Still , she is the one thing enjoyable about it.

You must watch Gosford Park!

The film is a novel come to life, but at its core is the relationship between a young maid (Kelly Macdonald) and her Ladyship (Maggie Smith) over the course of a country weekend from Hell.

Directed by Robert Altman, written by Julian Fellows, and produced by Bob Balaban, the film has an impressive cast: Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Charles Dance, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ryan Phillippe, Michael Gambon Derek Jacobi, Alan Bates, Emily Watson, Stephen Fry, and Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello.

So many characters, each with a complete backstory. You can watch the film multiple times and learn something new about a character each time.

She's at her most hilariously acidulous in Gosford park, but there are no shadings to the character 9except at the very beginning when she's marooned in her car and looks frightened). It's not her fault--I think Julian Fellowes just did not know what to do with that character to develop her, because he was so fascinated by what a bitch she was. (Apparently it's based on a woman in his own family, who is the basis for all the other sharp-tongued and sneering aristocratic women who pop up through his oeuvre.)

R56- THE best line in Gosford Park ( of which there were many)-

Bought marmalade ?

I call that very feeble.

Travels with my Aunt was one of her very few misfires. She isn’t terrible, just very mediocre.

The lonely passion of Judith Hearne should be on your list.. Fantastic performance.

R55- I don't think her DA character was like Gosford Park at all.

There was NOTHIING redeeming about her in GP. She was just petty and complaining and she had no fonts of wisdom to give unlike her character in DA. That being said her GP character was much more realistic of someone of her class than DA.

[Quote] Liv Ullman said in her autobiography that Smith had to be escorted from the theater because she was so distraught.

R40 odd that Smith doesn't appear to have been at the Oscars that year

Man hands.

Don't forget that Kate was originally cast in Travels With My Aunt.

I wonder why Angela Lansbury didn't get the role since it was essentially Auntie Mame and she lost out on Mame the movie.

She is a talented comedian and I always laugh at her jokes, she is such a character. I always thought that her and Stephen fry were related, they look a bit alike.

I know it's a minor role, but she'll always be Wendy Moira Angela Darling from Hook to me. Her wonderful jewelry, her cozy London townhouse, and John Williams' pre-Potter score are stuck in my inner child's brain. Plus, watching Hook as an adult led me to discovering Michael Llewellyn Davies (one of Barrie's inspiration for the Peter Pan stories) and his tragic, but romantic drowning with his boyfriend at Oxford in 1921.

Post 31 Rod Taylor publicly said she was beautiful and very sexy. They starred in The VIP’s which led me to believe they had an affair. I think she’s to private to say they shagged.

“Leeeeeeeetle geeeeaaaaaaarrrrrrls…!!”

A little bit of Lettice and Lovage for you:

R36 She was pleasant enough in the Sister Act films - a few hilarious scenes and pointed barbs in the first - but she really didn't have very much to do overall in either one.

She was rather honest about that, too. Apparently she asked the writer or director on day one something along the lines of: Are you the one that's going to give me the substance of my part? Because I don't know what the hell I'm even doing here. She took 2 and 2 and made it 10, as it were.

Bed among the Lentils.

I've posted this before, r67...

[quote]The intensity of Rod and Maggie’s on-screen relationship led several people who worked on the film to conclude that they were really falling in love.

Post

Apostrophe

Too

Who?

R74 Watch your step, Judi.

Maggie Smith is also great in "Tea With Mussolini" (1999) directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It also has lovely performances by Cher, Judi Dench, Lily Tomlin & Joan Plowright.

Maggie is also funny in the two 'Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' movies.

I also like Maggie Smith in the original "Clash of the Titans" (1981) as the goddess Thetis who has a power struggle with Zeus (Laurence Olivier).

It also stars DL fave Harry Hamlin & his nipples.

Thanks R71 and R77. One fantastic monologue as an malcontents alcoholic Vicar's wife!

[quote] I wonder why Angela Lansbury didn't get the role since it was essentially Auntie Mame and she lost out on Mame the movie.

She wasn't considered a box office draw at the time. The only leads she got in movies in those days were in Disney kids' films.

[quote] I also like Maggie Smith in the original "Clash of the Titans" (1981) as the goddess Thetis who has a power struggle with Zeus (Laurence Olivier).

I like her performance in that movie, but what's so weird is that the key plot engine is after Andromeda's mother Cassiopeia claims in Thetis's temple that her daughter is more beautiful than Thetis herself. tthis makes Thetis so angry she demands Andromeda has to be sacrificed to the Kraken, which starts off perseus's quest to find the necessary tools (Pegasius, the head of the Medusa) to defeat the Kraken.

By the point, her years of smoking had done a number on Maggie Smith's looks, so that she looked much older and more withered than the age she actually was (as she herself admitted). So Cassiopeia's comparison of her gorgeous daughter's beauty to that of Thetis just seems bizarre.

Sorry for all the typos.

Travels...

California Suite and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne show her staggering range

Lettice and Lovage was a Broadway highlight for me. A delight.

One perfect moment...

Much ado...

I was lucky enough to see her in A German Life in London and she sat alone on stage for the entire show and just captivate the audience. Terrific

I would love to have see her in Much Ado. (Well, I'd love to see her in anything...) Did she ever do Earnest?

The Guardsman...Stratford '77

Also that year at Stratford...

Where is her Phaedra? Her Lady Macbeth?

R81, it's nice to see Sian Phillips in the role of Cassiopeia, even though it's a small part. She's always been good at playing Queens and regal figures.

This is one of her top performances--as herself.

R91 she did Macbeth in 78. I might be misremembering but I thought she could do the California Suite role in her sleep, she should have won her second Oscar for Gosford Park, especially as Jennifer Connelly did very little to merit her win that year and although Mirren was excellent in a couple of scenes she didn't really do enough to justify a win.

R94, I thought Smith and Mirren were both excellent in 'Gosford Park' in different ways. Smith had the more fun, flashier character. Mirren was playing an understated, low-key role as the housekeeper, and that's the point of her character. I agree with you that Connelly was overrated and some people felt she should have been in the Lead Actress category instead of Supporting. I wish the Supporting Actress Oscar had gone to Smith or Mirren.

Connelly was a wasted Oscar

I agree , they were both great, r95, only Mirren, unlike Smith, had a character arc, giving her an edge.

Apparently Dame Helen was unsure of accepting the role of Mrs Wilson as there were no scenes that required her to get her big old titties out for a paying audience

I get Sian Phillips and Sian Clifford confused.

[quote] Jennifer Connelly did very little to merit her win that year

She put some part of her body in, near or on some part of Harvey Weinstein's hideous, corpulent flesh and pretended to like it, which was apparently THE Oscar winning performance of the century.

[quote] I get Sian Phillips and Sian Clifford confused.

It's the double letters next to each other in their last names right?

R101 Maybe? I know Sian....Phillips? has had a much longer career. But I never remember who is who right off the bat, I have to Google them to confirm.

Maggie Smith on Charlie Rose

I saw her in Lettice & Lovage in London - my only time in the city and it was wonderful!

I can't watch Gosford Park because of what happens to the little doggie.

And I also think about what Noel Coward replied when he was asked what it was like to sleep with Ivor Novello......"Musical," he said.

R104 nothing happens to the dog...

[quote]Apparently Dame Helen was unsure of accepting the role of Mrs Wilson as there were no scenes that required her to get her big old titties out for a paying audience

r98...

The Dame documentary should have been Maggie, Glenda Jackson, Diana Rigg and Vanessa Redgrave.

Judi came later, Eileen Atkins is largely unknown in the states, and I have no idea why Olivier’s second wife was even invited.

He ends up out on the street!

I always heard that "musical" quote ascribed to Winston Churchill...?

[quote]R107 The Dame documentary should have been Maggie, Glenda Jackson, Diana Rigg and Vanessa Redgrave.

I don’t know those women went out of their way to socialize, particularly. The group the film focuses on has intertwining friendships that go back forever.

R98- Better to see those BIG old titties than be forced to endure even a second of Irene Cara's

RAISIN TITTIES

I thought she was dreadful as Desdemona and miscast. I think John Simon said it was rare you have two Emilias in Othello and I thought that was accurate.

Every couple of years or so, I'll read Alan Bennett's "A Bed Among the Lentils," and all I can hear is Maggie's voice in my head, her performance was that indelible.

R110, that's correct. I believe Dench is good friends with Jackson from their RSC days, and Smith and Plowright were part of The National Theater while Olivier ran it, so they have that history. In the documentary, Atkins mentions marching with Redgrave on some issue back in the 60's.

There was some bad blood between Smith and Redgrave when the latter had an affair with Smith's then-husband Robert Stephens, but that was a long time ago. But Redgrave's general sanctimoniousness (however well-intentioned) would, I imagine, make the other women want to keep her at arm's length.

I would have to wonder how either Smith or Plowright would get on with Jackson given the egos involved.

R112, I agree with you about Smith's Desdemona, though John Simon was not a fan of Smith's in general. He was quite negative about her performance as Jean Brodie:

"Maggie Smith does fine in the quieter moments of the part, but much of the time she does a grossly mannered, female-impersonatorish camping around..."

I don't really agree with that, but the latter part of his quote certainly applies to her performance in TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT.

[quote]R114 There was some bad blood between Smith and Redgrave… I would have to wonder how either Smith or Plowright would get on with Jackson given the egos involved.

Redgrave and Jackson are too blunt and political for that tea party set.

I don’t think the women in the Dames documentary ever ventured very far outside a theater, so those other two might not have much time for them over the years.

Doesn't Helen Mirren have a breakdown scene in Gosford Park? That would be sure to get her nom over Maggie.

That interview with Charlie Rose is annoying, He keeps repeating back to her what she has told him.

[quote] I always heard that "musical" quote ascribed to Winston Churchill...?

That sounds right. He delighted in sleeping with Ivor Novello, after all.

Even though it put Clementine out of countenance.

[quote]R117 Doesn't Helen Mirren have a breakdown scene in Gosford Park?

Yes, but it’s pretty brief. She’s great in that part, though.

It's a pity The Lonely Passion Of Judith H didn't come out in one of the weaker years for Best Actress, such as 84 or 86.

R107, you're correct that Eileen Atkins & Joan Plowright are unknown in the United States, outside of film buffs such as those of us on DL. Judi Dench & Maggie Smith are much bigger stars and have had lots of success at the Oscars, too. Plowright only had one nomination and Atkins has none.

Imagine going from Vivien Leigh to Joan Plowright!

Well, he quickly went from Plowright to Sarah Miles…

Vivien Leigh was batshit crazy. You should read about some of her antics when she was married to Olivier.

I showed The Lonely Passion to my aunt. I thought she would like Maggie in it but when we got to the rape scene she was not impressed.

R118 I thought it was good. He was asking her to dive into more detail about her incredible life

R117, both Mirren and Smith were nominated for 'Gosford Park'. I agree with you that I would have given the win to Mirren over Smith if I was choosing the Oscars for that year.

Maggie even attended that year.

Helen Mirren is forgettable in Gosford Park. Maggie stole the entire movie with just a tilt of the head.

Maggie Smith is often accused of a lack of subtlety, but in Gosford Park she delivered a master class in understatement. I just rewatched the film last night, and was struck by how little she did while creating such an interesting and memorable character.

I love Maggie Smith, but her role in Gosford Park is an easier & flashier one to play than the Helen Mirren one.