It’s hard to think of another actor who could do more with syllables than Maggie Smith. Language for her was an all-purpose prop.
Her characters would crash down on consonants, as though landing a plane in the midst of an engine blowout or stretch out vowels in defiance of several laws of physics. Silence was a deadly weapon in her hands. Her pauses could swallow up surrounding conversation. More powerful than any wisecrack was the space she left for anticipation not only of what she might say but how she might say it.
Trained as a repertory stage actor in an English system rooted in Shakespeare, Dame Maggie, who died Friday in London at 89, was groomed for versatility. Her astonishing range, as borne out by a stage and screen career that traversed generations, genres and culture levels, had one common denominator: a reverence for the written word. Her gifts — and they were rightly legendary — turned dialogue on the page into verbal music.
If comedy was more native to her than tragedy, it was because she understood that life observed no separation between the two. Grief and loss didn’t cancel out the sheer absurdity of human behavior. She relished the indomitable nature of our quirks and caprices, their capacity to survive even egregious catastrophe. Each of us will eventually be erased, but our unique textures are unrepeatable. She honored those traces even as she ironically nailed their indefensible triviality.
I saw Smith only once on stage in New York, the last time she was on Broadway, in Peter Shaffer’s “Lettice and Lovage” in 1990. I was a student at the time and I can still feel the air of excitement around the production. Audiences flocked to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre to see a comic virtuoso in full fight. Watching Smith lob verbal grenades with her co-star Margaret Tyzack was like watching Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova trade forehands at Wimbledon.
The play, about a fanciful tour guide of a dull and stately English country house who runs into conflict with a factually fastidious official at the historic property, was almost immaterial. What endures is the rasping byplay, the soaring exasperation, the tango of opposing temperaments finding fleeting common ground. Shaffer provided just enough to unleash the formidable arsenals of two canny veterans.
Smith won an Oscar for her 1969 star turn in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” about a larger-than-life teacher at a girls’ school in Edinburgh who wants to liberate the minds of her students with romantic ideas that prove dangerous if not fascistic. Based on Muriel Spark’s indelible novel, the film was a perfect vehicle for Smith’s histrionic charm and seductive wizardry.
She was at her best on screen when she could bring the stage with her. Her first Oscar nomination was for playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello and her subsequent nominations were all for characters whose theatricality was a mode of existence. She earned a second Oscar for her magnificent supporting turn in Herbert Ross’ 1978 film “California Suite,” playing an egomaniacal British actress who has come to Los Angeles with her husband to attend the Academy Awards as her marriage unravels. Smith makes a full-course meal of Neil Simon’s savage skit.
International fame descended on Smith through her work in “Downton Abbey” and the “Harry Potter” films, a fame she treated like a suspicious visitor. Playing an acid-tongue dowager or master teacher of witchcraft came naturally to her, but what thrilled her about acting was its transformative freedom. An actor contains multitudes, and Smith knew there were legions inside her.
Aristocrats with autocratic manners were fun to play, but characters from the common rung could be just as commanding. She excelled on stage and screen in Alan Bennett’s “The Lady in the Van,” playing a crotchety squatter with an imperious sense of entitlement. Another Bennett work, “Bed Among the Lentils,” part of his “Talking Heads” series of monologues filmed for BBC Television, gave Smith the chance to play a lonely vicar’s wife with an ever-more noticeable drinking problem and longings that are not so easy to contain.
Balancing pathos and idiosyncratic humor in portrayals of women brought to the limits of their resources — something she managed to perfection in the 1987 film “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” — was always her strong suit. She recognized that there’s nothing more dramatic than human contradiction, the clash and jangle of self-image and public perception.
Consider the haughtiness of her unforgettable dowager in “Gosford Park” set against the character’s dire financial straits. Satire stings best when dipped in embarrassing realities.
Smith had that quality that Geraldine Page had of bringing the street to the screen or stage, as though someone living an everyday life had sneaked in through the casting back door. That these were two of the most technically accomplished actors of the modern era is a testament to their genius. Smith, a product of the classical British tradition, had the lightning eloquence of Shakespeare to guide her. Her timing was unmatched, but what made it so was the truth she revealed in the gap that occurs before thought and feeling finally relieve themselves in words.
