The highlight of a movie actor’s life is winning an Academy Award.
For most, it’s a one-time thing if they manage to win one at all. Some one-time winners are flukes, while others are older actors who finally win one near the end of their careers. Henry Fonda was in 126 movies and finally won an Oscar the year he died. John Wayne won one Oscar while making 184 films.
There have been 45 men and women who have won more than one award, with 10 of them only winning for supporting roles.
One of the 35 who won both for lead roles and supporting roles died today. Dame Maggie Smith was 89 years old, and amazingly among older actresses, worked right up to the end. In fact, for all the talk about Meryl Streep being one of the few older actresses to work regularly, Smith had roles in 39 different movies and television shows after the age of 60.
Her first Oscar came in 1970 for her lead role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” and her second was nine years later for her role in “California Suite.” Of course those were a long time ago, and most moviegoers under the age of 60 probably won’t have seen either one.
Vincent Canby’s review in The New York Times described her performance as Jean Brodie as “a staggering amalgam of counterpointed moods, switches in voice levels and obliquely stated emotions, all of which are precisely right.”
But Smith will be best remembered by younger generations for two recurring roles, one of the highbrow variety and one more popular. She played Professor McGonagall in seven of the eight Harry Potter movies and was the Dowager Countess in 52 television episodes and two movies of “Downton Abbey.”
I recently finished watching all of “Downton Abbey,” and as wonderful as it is, it would be much less wonderful without Smith. Her role won her three of her four Emmy Awards. Add her Tony to that and the only reason she isn’t on the EGOT list (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) is that she doesn’t sing.
Back home in Britain, she won the BAFTA award (the British Oscars) for Best Actress three times in five years from (1985-89).
Streep is probably the only older American actress who compares, although she still has 14 years to go to reach the age at which Smith stopped acting and died. I should mention Jane Fonda too. She’s still working regularly at 86.
Of course in England there are two others who compare and could hold their own against Smith. Judi Dench and Helen Mirren have both won Oscars and are still working regularly. Mirren is 79 and Dench will be 90 in December.
Great ladies both.
Just as we will miss Maggie Smith, we will miss the others when they are gone.