Maggie Smith: A Biography

by Michael Coveney

No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith. Michael Coveney's biography shines a light on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades. From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes from Richard Burton, answering back to Laurence Olivier, or playing opposite Judi Dench in Breath of Life, her career can be seen as a 'Who's Who' of British theatre. Her film and television career are just as starry. From the title character in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and the meddling chaperone in A Room With a View to the Harry Potter films in which she played Minerva McGonagall (as she put it 'Miss Jean Brodie in a wizard's hat') and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films in which she played the wise Muriel Donnelly, Smith has thrilled, engaged and made audiences laugh. As Violet Crawley, the formidable Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey she conquered millions more. Paradoxically she remains an enigmatic figure, rarely appearing in public. Michael Coveney's absorbing biography, written with the actress's blessing and drawing on personal archives, as well as interviews with immediate family and close friends, is a portrait of one of the greatest actors of our time.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Audiobook, History, Memoir, British Literature

368 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

Michael Coveney is one of Britain's most respected theater critics and has written about theatre for over three decades, as editor of Plays and Players, and as staff critic on the Financial Times, Observer and Daily Mail. His books include a history of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre and biographies of Maggie Smith, Mike Leigh and Andrew Lloyd Webber. He regularly contributes to the Independent, Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, Prospect and BBC Radio's Front Row. He lives in England.

Reviews

[N.N. Heaven · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a huge Maggie Smith fan and heard how wonderful this biography was to read. Newsflash: this is so boring, I would rather wallpaper our whole house before reading it again. Dry, boring and not very insightful. Skip it.

My Review: 2 stars

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

If readers want more of a performance or theatrical review, this biography of Maggie Smith's is very thorough in covering Maggie's work. In fact, the book is mostly about Maggie's acting career: Details and more details about the play or movie or other professional work, including other actors and their comments, and delving into particular scenes and how they are acted. I found it to be quite dull - the author expresses that Maggie has a personality, but it isn't brought to life here, though there were glimpses (Maggie's early relationship with her mother and a general picture of her childhood is presented in a more personal, sympathetic way, and I loved learning what books Maggie read and enjoyed as a child, and the fact that she sat in the bathtub with her blue jeans on).

The book felt more like a technical study of Maggie's professional world and works, and less like a personal portrait of Maggie as a whole person - it lacked warmth and personality.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b068td6z

Description: No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain's best-loved actors. This new biography shines the stage-lights on the life and work of a truly remarkable performer, whose career spans six decades.

From her days as a star of West End comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes from Richard Burton (by his own admission), answering back to Laurence Olivier, or impressing Ingmar
Bergman, her career can be seen as a Who's Who of British theatre in the twentieth century.

We also hear about her success in Hollywood - inaugurated by her first Oscar for her signature film, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - as well as her subsequent departure to Canada for a prolific four-season run of leading theatre roles.

Recently, Dame Maggie has been as prominent on our screens as ever, with high-profile roles as Violet Crawley, the formidable Dowager Countess of Grantham in the phenomenally successful Downton Abbey, and in the Harry Potter films as Professor Minerva McGonagall - a role she describes as 'Miss Jean Brodie in a wizard's hat'.

Yet paradoxically, Dame Maggie remains an enigmatic figure, rarely appearing in public and carefully guarding her considerable talent. Michael Coveney's absorbing biography, drawing on personal archives, interviews and encounters with the actress, as well as conversations with immediate family and dear friends, is therefore as close as it gets to seeing the real Maggie Smith.

Maggie gets the acting bug

2/5: Maggie Smith hits Broadway and Edinburgh and makes her first films

3/5: Marriage and first acting award

4/5: The film career blossoms

5/5: Flying solo in her personal life Maggie works harder than ever.

[Laurie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Maggie Smith, but unfortunately this book was beyond dull. It read like a very long resume with almost no details about her personal life. This may be because she is a very private person who is loathe to discuss herself, but I can't help feeling that her life's accomplishments, set in a different author's hands, would have been much more entertaining to read. Skip this book and go watch some of her excellent performances on stage or screen instead. Her brilliance speaks for itself. :)

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've finished it. I found myself alternating between being confused, occasionally fascinated, bored, and at times just determined to keep going because of the subject.
Maggie Smith is an actress I have enjoyed watching in any production I have seen her in, and in that regard it was fascinating to be introduced to her huge body of work both on stage and in film. I am a late in her career admirer because I never saw her in earlier productions nor had the opportunity to see her in action on stage.
But the occasional glimpse of something that sparked enthusiasm in me was hidden in amongst a tangle of production names and dates and characters names and actors names and often I was lost trying to figure out what on earth the author was actually referring to.
I admit my in depth knowledge of the British theatrical scene is obviously even more limited than I thought, but I was lost in the tangle.
I say this in no disrespect to the subject of the biography. An amazing actress and obviously a very private person. Perhaps that is the problem, she does not want her life written about in any detail.
Anyway I have finished it.
And I still love Maggie Smith

[Annaliese Budimir · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Maggie Smith as so I was very excited to start reading her biography. However, I agree with the other reviews on here - it was hard going, pretty dull and just a list of all the plays and films she was in. There was no insight of Maggie Smith in there at at all - her dry whit and sense of humour was no where to be found! Very disappointing and would not recommend.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s rather ironic and a bit sad that I would dislike any biography of Maggie Smith, because I admire her acting so much. In my opinion, her ability to portray nuances of a character with slightest of eye or body movements or intone humor and irony in the simplest of lines is unsurpassed by any actor living or dead. The breadth of her work is impressive. She seems like a proper—but fun—British lady with sensibilities from a grander era of theater. And yet, her biography bored me. How can this be?

Michael Coveney is a theatrical critic, and presents the entire roster of Ms. Smith’s roles and productions in chronological order. In doing so, he examines each in such great detail that he gives away the entire plot and best moments of each project, leaving nothing for the reader to discover later. This approach works well for old theatrical roles that Smith will never recreate. However, should the reader want to view Smith’s movies or TV productions after reading about them, the author has ruined all of the surprises. More information than what is needed for a reader to decide whether or not to see the film is too much.

Other reviewers have pointed out that there isn’t much about Smith’s personal life in the book. What bothers me even more is the unsupported speculation about her personal life as reflected in her acting history. The author writes off Smith’s first marriage to actor Robert Stephens, despite the couple having two children together. He infers that it was doomed from the beginning and was practically arranged by Smith’s second husband, producer Beverley Cross, to kill time before Cross’s divorce. The caption on one photo says that Maggie is keeping an eye on Robert’s drinking, but in the photo I see two actors relaxing backstage after a show. She’s smoking a cigarette and looking amused, and he’s drinking a small glass of wine, hardly the drink of a theatre boozehound.

If the book were better edited, I might have liked it more. The prose is not well worded, nor does it tell a very interesting story. It seems more like a laundry list of activities pursued during a lifetime than a story with a unifying theme and satisfying plot line. Since no other biography has been written, it seems that Maggie Smith is not forthcoming about the story of her life. That’s all the more reason to keep what is said about her short and simple.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain's best-loved actors. This new biography shines the stage-lights on the life and work of a truly remarkable performer, whose career spans six decades.

From her days as a star of West End comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes from Richard Burton (by his own admission), answering back to Laurence Olivier, or impressing Ingmar
Bergman, her career can be seen as a Who's Who of British theatre in the twentieth century.

We also hear about her success in Hollywood - inaugurated by her first Oscar for her signature film, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - as well as her subsequent departure to Canada for a prolific four-season run of leading theatre roles.

Recently, Dame Maggie has been as prominent on our screens as ever, with high-profile roles as Violet Crawley, the formidable Dowager Countess of Grantham in the phenomenally successful Downton Abbey, and in the Harry Potter films as Professor Minerva McGonagall - a role she describes as 'Miss Jean Brodie in a wizard's hat'.

Yet paradoxically, Dame Maggie remains an enigmatic figure, rarely appearing in public and carefully guarding her considerable talent. Michael Coveney's absorbing biography, drawing on personal archives, interviews and encounters with the actress, as well as conversations with immediate family and dear friends, is therefore as close as it gets to seeing the real Maggie Smith.

Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b068td6z

[Barry Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

For someone who's been on the world stage since the late 1950's, we know surprisingly little about the marvelous actress, Maggie Smith, most recently of Downton Abbey and The Lady In The Van fame. It was only recently I discovered that the actor, Toby Stephens, who plays in the TV series, Black Sails, is her son by actor Robert Stephens (they divorced in 1975 after an eight-year marriage). This lack of information is fairly deliberate on her part. She rarely does television or print interviews or the kind of shows that talk about her personal life, preferring to concentrate on her work.

Theatre critic and historian, Michael Coveney, has finally rectified this gap with his superb biography, detailing her career in full and enough of her life from interviews with family, friends, and co-workers to satisfy her many fans. It's an engaging story from her early days in Oxford University Drama School and West End revues to The National Theatre and her Desdemona opposite Olivier's Othello, films like The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, Death On The Nile, California Suite, the Harry Potter series, Stratford in Canada, and all the many other theatre, television, and film productions of a long and distinguished career. She's top of a very short list of actresses who have ranged through such a wide spectrum of both comedy and drama and shows no signs of slowing down. If you have an interest in theatre or film, this is a must-read. - BH.

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently Smith authorized the biography but gave Coveney very few interviews but did allow him access to family, friends and colleagues. Smith appears to be very reclusive. There is not much information on Smith’s private life; the book is all about her professional life.

Smith was born in 1934 to a working class family. Her mother told her she would never become an actress “with a face like that” She was in plays in high school and in her late teens started to work in the repertory English theater. The author compares and discusses what he calls the three greatest English actresses of the generation: Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. Coveney discuss their different styles and the plays, movies etc., they have played together in. The last part of the book covers her roles in the Harry Potter films and “Downton Abbey.”

I rarely read biographies of actors so I have little to compare this too. But I felt Coveney just gave boilerplate descriptions of her various roles and failed to dig into her private life. I do realize Smith is reclusive and very private but I feel a good biographer overcomes that problem and digs deep into the subject’s life. I felt the author should have done a better job with this biography. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Sian Thomas did an excellent job narrating the story.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are looking for insight into the inimitable Maggie's personal life, you have come to the wrong place. However, as an overview of the professional life and remarkable achievements of an equally remarkable lady, this book will fill all the chinks in your personal Maggie Smith encyclopedia.

[Kylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did I read this book, yes. Did I read every word...no. Why? Because the author writes long-winded sentences that are so complicated that it is often quite difficult to read them. Which is unfortunate as I do like Maggie Smith quite a lot.

She is not directly interviewed in this biography, though the author does quite a good amount on research which adds a star to the rating. Despite that, a lot of the chapters retell the plots of the plays and movies that Ms. Smith starred in. There are tidbits into her performances and some quirks from those she acted with, but I found a lack of gravitas with the whole thing.

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book becasue I love Maggie Smtih. She has been on the stage and screen for for 60 years and with no plastic surgery. She has played opposite all the famous British stars. I have not seen in many things. But i lived her in the Best Exoctic Marigold Hotel. She plays kind of a sarcastic grump eith a big heart. It is a long book so I only mentioned a few things.

[Priscilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Words, words, words. My suspicion is that Mr. Coveney did not have enough for a real biography (it's pretty clear that Dame Maggie did not cooperate), so he filled this book with plot outlines and his personal reviews of every single play and movie he could get his hands on (and she's done a lot!) Tedious in the extreme.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

NOVEMBER 2025 - I LOVE Dame Maggie Smith. I have loved everything I have ever seen her in. I so wanted to love this book, but it was rather dry. This is truly a history of her acting career with tidbits of her life thrown in. I still don’t know why some biographies are so compelling and others are dull. This falls in the latter category. However, I did learn some interesting things like how Highclere Castle’s owner along with Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb in 1922. Who knew?

[Sylwia · Rating 3 out of 5]

aż ma człowiek ochotę znów odpalić maraton Downton Abbey

[Carolyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This biography, written by a theater critic, assumes an extensive background knowledge of plays, movies and English actors. The narrative is a detailed account of every play, movie and television show Maggie Smith has appeared in--the plot summary, cast of characters and the actors who portrayed every part, and the critical reaction, including the author's own, to Maggie's performance. There is very little about Maggie Smith, the person, in these pages, and I could have learned just as much about her by reading her Wikipedia page and in a lot less time. There is also a lot of unnecessary information padding the pages--asides about fellow actors, directors and producers that don't shed any light on Maggie Smith. I had hopes to learn more about a talented actress that I admire greatly, but I only learned bits and pieces about her background, her work ethic, her family, and her quest for privacy. Perhaps it was the privacy issue that stymied the author. But the portrait presented here is very incomplete.

[Kati · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed with this book. I was hoping to read the story of her life. I understand she is quite a private person, so perhaps getting that story is pretty hard, but this book was more of a detailed/expanded resume more than anything with a lot of listing of names of people who were in various productions with her. I would have rather had more stories about things that took place while she was working on these various projects. I read the first couple of chapters, as well as the chapter about Harry Potter and Downton Abbey (even that chapter wasn't all that interesting) and skimmed through the rest of the book. Downton Abbey fans who are looking to learn more about the woman behind the Dowager Countess will probably be disappointed, unless they are really into theater and name dropping.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

What. was this.

If you want to know the plots (including spoilers) and casting of every play and film in which Maggie Smith performed plus a little bit of gossip for each one, then this is for you. It felt like TV Guide Special Edition: Maggie Smith (With a Lettice and Lovage teaser in every chapter!)

There were some insightful portions that illuminated the path that Dame Maggie Smith made to become who she is (I wasn't aware of her earlier sensual/sexual roles!), but not a lot of thoughtful analysis or psychological understanding. It was an unfortunately boring rendition of a fascinating woman.


*Also—who knew: Sir Laurence Olivier was irritating and oft called "Larry."

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it was brilliant. If you're going into this expecting gossip, or tell-alls, that people have come to expect, then this isn't for you. Coveney, has a fabulous vocabulary, and my dictionary was a bit of a constant companion.
It's a hard read, if you're not particularly familiar with the theatre industry, there are alot of people mentioned, and I had no idea who most of them were.
However, those aren't criticisms, because I really enjoyed the book, and understood why Maggie would have let Michael of all her people, write her biography. She was renowned for being private, and I wouldn't have expected any different with an authorised biography. And, I also thought it bought home just how important her craft was to her.
I personally, found that I enjoyed reading this, and because I'm a huge geek, going back through it, and sort of using it as an anchor into understanding the theatre industry, the players - {I had to go back through and do some googling, to get a who is who right in my head], and the history and culture. And although I've loved Maggie Smith, since I was a child, I've never been particularly interested in the industry she was a part of. And yet this book made me interested, to learn or understand more, I suppose, of the world she was a part of, especially because her craft was clearly so important.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and I learnt far more than I expected to learn. And it inspired me to go further than the book, which surprised me. Rather than just putting it down and moving on, once read.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I sadly pushed through to chapter 18 with the book on audio. I absolutely love Maggie smith so was really looking forward to this. However, apart from the terrible and jarring accents that the reader decides to use the book is basically a summery of all of her work going into great detail about what happens in each film. She was talking about Keeping mum (which I love ) and I told my husband he has to watch it then the book revealed the whole story including the ending. We gave up… just couldn’t listen anymore to basically film reviews.

[Della Tingle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, my! It is done! I am just so glad it is done! I love Maggie Smith…I really do! However, this biography was quite tedious to get through. I enjoy biographies and autobiographies so much, but this book goes into such depth on movies and plays and countless actors and directors and writers that it was just too much! It reminds me of getting on the internet and clicking one link then another then another then another until you are so far away from the original search. Maybe it’s Michael Coveney’s writing style. Maybe it’s his “British-ness.” Whatever it is, this book and I did not click!

[Lucy Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do know more about Maggie Smith now than before. I do still love her. I would not advise anyone to read this book because it doesn't feel particularly well written as a biography. It's less than half about her and mostly a lengthy list of people she worked with and verbose synopsis of several productions she was in. It felt like reading a book someone promised a publisher would be 300+ pages, even though they only had enough good info for about 125 of actual biography.

[Christina Farr-Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

holy crap that was hard to get through. I really love Maggie Smith. She is by far one of my favorite actors, but this is a book about her filmography. Not her. It is dry, boring, and just plain difficult to read. I tried to switch to the audiobook but it was even worse. If you want the exact same information, look her up on IMBD and save yourself some time.

[Karen Wales · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at the halfway mark. It's really more of a review of all her acting, to every nuance, rather than a traditional biography. 2 stars because some of it was interesting, particularly her time at Stratford Ontario.

[Terriamn Murrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderful read.

[I. Anamaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wonderful book about a wonderful woman. Perfect for fans of her work! My favorite chapter is "Harry Potter and Downton Abbey" because those are my two favorite portions in her career.

[Kathleen Nightingale · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a yawn. Didn't tell you anything and Michael loved lists.

[Deacon Tom (Feeling Better) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Lovely Book

3 1/2 stars
More of a summary of her acting jobs than a personal biography. That made the book move really slowly.

A good read for fans.

[Shelley Lawson · Rating 1 out of 5]

The driest text I have ever tried to read.
a biography should not be an exhaustive catalogue of facts, surely, but an opportunity to bring an interesting (and in this case much admired) person to life.
Michael Coveney achieved the exact opposite.
Several times I picked it up again but it's impenetrable. Sadly my book club all agreed and we've had to pick a totally new book for next month's discussion!