At 89, Maggie Smith Reveals the 5 People She Loved the Most 

I had I had two brothers. They were twins. So, I was really more or less like an only child. But and they were they were very very bright, my my brothers. I suppose when you reach my age, people expect you to remember the films. They’ll ask about the Oscars, Harry Potter, Downton Abbey.

 They’ll ask what it was like standing on those great stages or working with famous names. And I don’t mind those questions, but they’re not the first things that come into my mind anymore. The funny thing about getting older is that the work slowly moves into the background. It’s still there, of course. I’m proud of it. I gave it everything I had, but when I find myself sitting quietly with a cup of tea, I don’t think about premieres.

I think about people, faces mostly. Someone laughing between takes. Someone knocking on my dressing room door just to see if I fancied a biscuit. Someone making a dreadful joke that somehow became funnier every single year. Those are the things that stay. I’ve been lucky. In this business, you meet extraordinary people.

Some are exactly as brilliant as the world believes they are. Others are far kinder than anyone ever knew because they never made a fuss about it. The newspapers always wrote about success. They rarely wrote about friendship, and that’s a pity because friendship is what carried many of us through the difficult days, long rehearsals, endless traveling, the moments when you wondered whether you’d ever get another good part.

There are people I worked with for years, and there are others I only saw now and then. Oddly enough, time was never what mattered. Some people leave such a mark on your life that you still expect to hear their voice years after they’ve gone. I still do that sometimes. I’ll hear a line read a certain way, or walk onto an old stage, and for just a second, I think they’re about to come round the corner with that familiar smile.

Of course, they never do. But, the memory always arrives before reality does. And perhaps that’s why I wanted to tell you about these five people. Because after everything else has faded, they’re still here with me. The first person who comes to mind is Richard. Most people remember the voice. You could hear Richard Harris before you ever saw him.

There was something unmistakable about the way he spoke, confident one moment, mischievous the next. Even when he was telling an ordinary story, it somehow sounded as though it deserved an audience. He made people laugh without trying very hard. That was one of the things I liked most about him. We worked together at different points over the years, and every time I saw him, it felt as though no time had passed at all.

Some actors arrive on set carrying the weight of their reputation. Richard never seemed terribly interested in that. He cared far more about whether everyone was enjoying themselves. Mind you, enjoying themselves often meant listening to one of his impossible stories. Half of them were probably true. The other half became better because they weren’t By the time he’d finished, nobody cared which was which.

I remember sitting between scenes while Richard wandered from chair to chair collecting little audiences without even meaning to. Somebody would ask him one simple question and 20 minutes later the entire room had forgotten filming was supposed to begin again. He had that sort of gift. What surprised people was how gentle he could be when the cameras weren’t rolling.

If someone looked nervous, he’d notice. If a young actor was worrying over a scene, Richard somehow found a way to make them laugh before offering a bit of advice. He never made it sound like teaching. It was simply conversation. I always admired that. There are actors who want everyone to know how talented they are.

Richard didn’t need to. You could see it the moment he stepped in front of the camera. Perhaps that’s why he never seemed to compete with anyone. He already knew who he was. When I heard he’d gone, I found myself thinking less about the remarkable performances and more about the ordinary afternoons, the conversations, the laughter echoing down the studio corridor.

The feeling that work somehow became lighter whenever Richard happened to be nearby. Those are the things I still miss. Not the legend everyone else remembers. Just Richard. Now, Judy, she’s one of those people I’ve never really thought of as a colleague. That sounds rather strange considering how often our names have been mentioned together over the years.

But to me, she always felt much closer than that. When you’ve known someone for decades, you stop thinking about careers. You simply know them. People often assume Judi and I must have spent all our time talking about acting. We really didn’t. If anything, we talked about the things everyone else talks about.

 Family, gardening, um someone getting hopelessly lost on the way to the theater, the weather, because we’re British and apparently it’s written into law. The acting happened when it had to. The friendship happened the rest of the time. I’ve always admired something about Judi that audiences don’t always get to see. Um she listens.

It sounds like such an ordinary thing, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. In our profession, there are plenty of people waiting for their turn to speak. Judi actually listens to what you’re saying and somehow makes you feel as though you’ve said something worth hearing. That’s a rare gift. I remember rehearsals where everyone was growing tired after hours of repeating the same scenes.

 Tempers can become rather short on days like that. Yet Judi had an extraordinary way of changing the mood without making a performance of it. Sometimes it was just a quiet joke. Sometimes she’d pull the funniest little face across the room until somebody noticed and started laughing. Within minutes, the tension had disappeared.

No speeches, no drama, just Judi being Judi. People love to compare us. Who was better? Who was funnier? Who the stronger performance. I never understood any of that. It always felt like asking someone to choose between two old friends simply because they happened to do the same job. I’ve never seen it that way.

I’ve only ever been grateful that our paths crossed when they did. Life in this profession can be surprisingly lonely even when you’re surrounded by people. Having someone who understands the strange rhythm of it all without needing an explanation is a blessing. Judy has always been that sort of person for me.

If If you’re fortunate enough to have even one friend like that in your lifetime, you’ve done remarkably well. I know I have. Alan was never the loudest person in the room. In fact, if you didn’t know him, you might have mistaken his quietness for distance. It wasn’t. That was simply Alan. He chose his words carefully.

 He didn’t feel the need to fill every silence, and I rather like that. There’s something comforting about people who don’t speak unless they actually have something to say. The first thing most people noticed was that wonderful voice. It was impossible not to. The rest of us noticed his eyes. They gave him away every time.

He could be keeping the straightest face imaginable, but those eyes always hinted that he was quietly amused by something. Working together on the Harry Potter films meant spending years crossing paths. They weren’t grand occasions. Most days were surprisingly ordinary. We’d be waiting for lighting adjustments, sitting around in costume, chatting while the crew sorted out one technical problem after another.

Films are rather less glamorous than people imagine. Alan never seemed bothered by the waiting. He’d wander over, ask how you were getting on, and before long we’d be talking about anything except the film we were making. Books, the theater, someone we’d both recently seen. Sometimes we’d sit there for 10 minutes without saying very much at all, and somehow it never felt awkward.

Not many people can make silence feel friendly. Alan could. He also had a wonderfully dry sense of humor. It wasn’t the sort that announced itself. It would arrive so quietly that half the room missed it, and then a few seconds later everyone would suddenly start laughing together. By then Alan was already pretending he hadn’t said anything clever.

I always found that terribly endearing. When news came that he’d gone, it didn’t seem possible. Some people feel permanent. You convince yourself they’ll always be somewhere nearby preparing for another rehearsal or walking onto another set with that familiar calm expression. I still catch myself thinking that from time to time.

Then I remember, and I feel grateful. Not because I worked with Alan Rickman, because I knew Alan. Those are two very different things. Now, Michael was quite impossible, and I mean that as the highest compliment. You never really knew what he was going to say next. He had that wonderfully unpredictable streak that kept everyone awake.

 On a long day when people were beginning to tire and the studio had gone a bit quiet, Michael would suddenly appear with some ridiculous observation that had the entire room laughing again. He never seemed to enjoy being treated like a great actor. If someone started praising him too much, he’d usually find a way to change the subject or make a joke at his own expense.

 There wasn’t a trace of vanity about him, which is surprisingly rare in our profession. I admired that enormously. People often think confidence comes from wanting to be noticed. Michael proved the opposite. He walked onto a set with complete confidence because he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He simply trusted himself and that confidence spread to everyone around him.

When he stepped into the role of Dumbledore, audiences embraced him in his own way. He never tried to imitate anyone who had played the character before him. That took courage. It would have been much easier to copy what people already loved, but Michael wasn’t interested in the easy path. He always found his own Off camera, he could be wonderfully mischievous.

Every now and then he’d catch someone’s eye during a quiet moment, say something so absurd that you’d have to bite your lip to stop laughing, and then stroll away as though nothing had happened. The poor director would be wondering why nobody could keep a straight face. Those Those little moments never made the newspapers.

They never appear in documentaries, but they’re the memories that stayed with me. When Michael left us, I realized how much of a room he used to fill without ever demanding attention. Some people carry a sort of warmth that everyone notices only after it’s gone. He was one of them. I miss the laughter. I miss never knowing what he’d say next.

And I miss seeing that familiar grin that always suggested he was about to get away with something. If I had to choose one person to end this little walk through my memories, it would have to be Diana. Um she was extraordinary. Not because everyone said she was, because she simply was. The public knew Diana as this wonderful elegant woman, intelligent, witty, completely in command of herself.

 All of that was true. But there was another side to her that people didn’t always get to see. She was incredibly thoughtful, not in a grand dramatic way, in the smallest ways. She’d remember something you’d mentioned months before and ask about it as though it had happened yesterday. She noticed when someone seemed tired.

 She noticed when someone was sitting alone. She noticed the people who were easiest to overlook. That tells you a great deal about a person. We shared so many years in the same profession that it sometimes felt as though our paths were always destined to cross. Theater has a curious way of creating lifelong friendships.

 You disappear into different productions, different cities, different countries, and then suddenly you’re standing together backstage again carrying on the same conversation you started years ago. With Diana, it was always easy. There was never any need to pretend. Neither of us had anything left to prove. We could simply be ourselves.

I think that’s one of the greatest gifts age gives you. You stop trying to impress people, and the friendships that remain become wonderfully honest. Diana understood that um she had a sharp wit that could leave an entire room in stitches, but she never used it to make someone feel small. That’s a difficult balance, and she managed it beautifully.

I’ve often thought that kindness is the quality people remember longest. Not brilliance, not fame, kindness. And Diana had plenty of it. When she passed away, I didn’t think first about the remarkable performances she’d given. I remembered hearing her laugh from the other side of a theater. I remembered long conversations after rehearsals when nobody was in a hurry to go home.

I remembered how comfortable it always felt to have her nearby. Those memories have become more precious with time. Perhaps that’s what happens as you grow older. You don’t count the films anymore. You count the people who made those years worth living. I’ve been fortunate enough to know many remarkable actors, but these five were something more than that.

They made me laugh when I needed it. They reminded me not to take this strange profession too seriously, and without ever meaning to, they made my life richer. People often say we’re remembered through our work. I hope that’s true, but I also hope we’re remembered through the way we treated one another. Because when the lights go out, the sets are taken down, and the applause belongs to another generation, that’s all that’s really left.

And uh even now, I still catch myself expecting to see them again. I suppose that’s what love does. It never really learns how to say goodbye. There comes a point in life when you stop measuring it by the years. You measure it by the people who walk beside you. I’ve been fortunate in more ways than I ever deserved.

 Yes, I was given remarkable roles. I stood on wonderful stages, and worked with extraordinary directors, but if you ask me what mattered most after all this time, I’d still come back to the same answer. The people. Richard could make an ordinary afternoon unforgettable. Judy reminded me that kindness never goes out of fashion.

Alan showed me that quiet people often leave the deepest impression. Michael proved that laughter can carry you through the longest days. And uh Diana uh she reminded me that grace isn’t something you perform. It’s simply the way you choose live. I still think about them. Sometimes it’s because I hear an old song.

Sometimes it’s a photograph. Sometimes it’s nothing at all. A face simply appears in my mind as though no time has passed. I don’t believe the people we truly love ever disappear completely. As long as we remember the way they laughed, the way they spoke, the way they made us feel, they’re still walking beside us in some small way.

And if I’ve learned anything after all these years, it’s this. Awards gather dust. Uh films become history. But love, friendship, and shared memories have a way of outliving us all. I think that’s rather a lovely thing. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.