Recent searches
Search options
Administered by:
"I have just thrown up on some of the best people in Hollywood, now is no time to be sensitive."
Maggie Smith could make her eyes & voice play different roles simultaneously. It meant she was amazing at undercutting pathos with comedy & vice vera.
Absolute Chaplin-level physical artistry.
Here’s her Oscar-winning performance in California Suite. You’ll never order Eggs Benedict again without quoting it.
I always had a weird crush on Maggie Smith when I was a young kid. Kind of like a pop star one you’d get from seeing them on TV.
For some people, it was Bowie doing ‘Starman’ or Kate Bush or whatever. But Smith? She was meta & smart, like Rita Hayworth with added, alien, Brecht-Bowie-Chaplin energy.
I kept seeing her being all cool and being *in* a role, and offering commentary *on* the character at the same time. Winking at the audience.
This is Maggie Smith’s Scary Monsters/Ashes To Ashes energy on the set of 1969’s ‘Oh What A Lovely War’.
1969, mind.
Bringing her 
Tilda Swinton/Madonna/Chaplin/Kabarett/Dylan-goes-electric gender-confuser energy to an otherwise pretty staid Death On The Nile (1978)
Seriously.
When Madonna came out with her cigar-chewing bisexual art-dominatrix Dita Parlo character in 1990, Maggie Smith had already cornered, tamed and trained it in this role.
