Get the latest gossip
11 Essential Maggie Smith Movie Performances
The late actor cultivated a specific kind of Englishness for the screen, but she was never afraid to upend expectation.
In this historical comedy farce, she plays wealthy, sex-starved Lady Isabel Ames, who offers Michael Palin, a former missionary to Africa, large donations for his next “charitable” cause: helping to rehabilitate local sex workers — but only if he will repay her in the bedroom. One of the things that has always distinguished Smith was her ability to play both high and low, with real variety in her roles and no snobbery around the sorts of parts she’d take on, whether it be Desdemona in Othello opposite Laurence Olivier or the unforgettable Reverend Mother in Sister Act. Combining a sense of stodgy Victorian propriety with an eye-twinkling cattiness and natural look of disapproval, she infamously regarded modern trappings — from a swivel chair to a telephone — with great suspicion, and like a true British blue-blood, detests the vulgarity of Americans.
Or read this on VULTURE
