Maggie Smith: A Biography (41 page)
Read Maggie Smith: A Biography Online
Authors: Michael Coveney
Another low moan of despair. She perks up at the mention of Helen Mirren winning an Oscar for her performance as the Queen in
The Queen
. ‘Yes, isn’t that great? Her and Jude [Judi Dench] really have cornered the market in queens, haven’t they? I only get the odd duchess, and a wizard, of course.’ This is uttered not with acid so much as a splash of vinegar. Which of the Harry Potter films does she like most? More low moaning. ‘Is it five, now? I seem to be doing less and less. I liked the first one when I changed from a cat.’ That’s the end of the ‘in-depth’ on that subject.
She’s more forthcoming on Albee: ‘He gives you a wonderful text, but he also gives you explicit stage directions. You might just have a name, but you know about this woman by the end of the play. His plays are fiendish to learn, but they do play like music, it’s sort of like a roundelay.’ As we leave the restaurant to get lost in Heal’s once again, she dares me not to leave a tip on the silver salver. The tip I leave is larger than the bill for the two meagre drinks. ‘Isn’t that Ian Richardson?’ she whispers, identifying a solo diner at a far table as the great voice of middle-period RSC and the television star of
House of Cards
. ‘He’s dead,’ I say. ‘Oh well, we can’t talk about him then.’ ‘And anyway,’ I persist, ‘he looks more like Sydney Tafler …’ ‘Don’t you start,’ she says, pushing me unceremoniously towards the exit. And she skips between cars and buses back to the rehearsal hall.
Margaret, aged three, on the front gate at 68 Northwood Gardens, Ilford
Day trip to Sandringham, September 1938, with her mother and brothers Ian (left) and Alistair
Aged ten, parading her membership of the Vera Legge School of Dancing in the back garden at 55 Church Hill Road, Oxford
Meg and Nat in Washington, DC, for Ian's first wedding, 1965
In
Twelfth Night
for the OUDS, 1952: ‘The Viola of our dreams,’ said the
Oxford Mail
Oxford High School for Girls, 1951
Maggie as Orange with Kenneth Williams as Lettuce Green (centre) in Bamber Gascoigne's revue
Share My Lettuce
at the Comedy Theatre, 1957
Maggie as Bridget with conman George Nader in her first feature film,
Nowhere to Go
(1958), co-written by Kenneth Tynan for Ealing Studios
Preparing in her dressing room as Mary McKellaway in Jean Kerr's
Mary, Mary
at the Queen's Theatre in 1963. It was her third, big West End role for all-powerful producer Binkie Beaumont
In Beverley Cross's second play,
Strip the Willow
(1960), Maggie played a girl described by the author as ‘very beautiful, elegant, sophisticated … with a great sense of fun’
With Laurence Olivier in the film version of
Othello
(1965): Maggie's Desdemona surprised critics and the public alike when John Dexter's production opened at Chichester and the Old Vic in the early days of the new National Theatre. With an ‘untouchable’ Olivier, said Tynan, she proved she could play characters ‘whose approach to sex was affirmative and aimed at total erotic fulfilment’
