September 30, 2024
Filming

Exit Stage Left

 

How lucky were we to welcome Maggie Smith to Highclere Castle for so many days over so many weeks and years.

Her experience, humour and performances were always perfection and we had the good fortune to watch the scenes being filmed as well as later watching her once again on a Sunday evening as ‘Downton Abbey’ became the perfectly cosy entertainment – albeit sharpened with wit and excellent comedic timing.

For all of us there are many memories perhaps of finding a warm(ish) sitting room in which Dame Maggie could sit in between takes during February and March filming. There, Diana our housekeeper could bring her a cup of tea. An electric fan radiator whirred away just in front of her offering some heat and the watery sun filtered through the windows into the sitting room – most of filming of course is hanging around, waiting….

I might pop in and ask her if she needed a magazine or a newspaper but, it was the privacy and calm that seemed most welcome.

I cannot remember seeing her with the pages of script. She already knew it of course and took acting seriously.

In some ways, she said she found the recognition she acquired through Downton annoying – sitting in a theatre watching a play an excited whisper would eddy round the audience saying that Maggie Smith was there. Speaking on The Graham Norton Show, she quipped: “I led a perfectly normal life until Downton Abbey. I’m not kidding” The razzmatazz and red carpet part of show business were not for her.

 

As the years of filming Downton progressed, an easy camaraderie between the cast on set developed with word games or other amusements to while away the time in between takes. It became a family and as with a family there were times when she could be rather formidable and clarify her point of view very clearly.

 

What fewer people may remember is that Maggie Smith first arrived at Highclere in an earlier guise as Mrs Medlock in the 1993 film A Secret Garden which was partly filmed here.

Further films marked my childhood and onwards from my parents watching the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – we were not to disturb them – to the film A room with a View which I watched as part of my English studies and later The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. She was indefatigable and managed to be both a Dowager Countess here, making us all laugh out loud, whilst filming a ‘Lady in a Van’ in the same year, and her flashes of vulnerability brought tears.  Equally, she was often recalled to perform magic as Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter.

 

Downton Abbey was just part of an extraordinary career spanning over seven decades. She had a magic touch for timing whether for comedy or tragedy and acted alongside most of the greats – to mention a few: Orson Welles and David Niven,  Michael Gambon, Judi Dench, Angela Lansbury, Anne Bancroft and Isabelle Adjani. She won numerous accolades including two Academy awards, five Bafta awards, three Golden Globe Awards and a Tony and was nominated for six Laurence Olivier awards and four Oscars but despite all this she often preferred not to collect them in person.

 

She was given an OBE in 1972, was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1990 and named a Companion of Honour in 2014. However, for all her legacy and extraordinary achievements, in the end the quickness of her passing will be felt most by her two sons and their families as an extraordinary mother and grandmother.

 

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I Foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air….

We are such stuff 

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”