Maggie Smith stars in Downton Abbey as the matriarch in Julian Fellowes’ seven-part costume drama which started on Sunday, 26th September.
Miss Smith plays Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, a widowed woman in a pre-First World War English estate. She is supportive of her son but severe with his American wife whom he married for money.
Advertised as “A House Divided” in the Radio Times, TV critic Alison Graham describes the ITV drama as a reprise of some of the themes which earned Fellowes an Oscar for Gosford Park: Fellowes has “taken his own Gosford Park, lightened its many dark shadows, thrown in a bit of Upstairs, Downstairs and a smidgen of E M Forster and come up with Downton Abbey.”
In Gosford Park, Fellowes says, in the same publication, “I had the privilege of watching at director Robert Altman’s elbow while she [Maggie Smith] demonstrated her immediate and absolute, grasp of the workings of this woman’s mind, a woman to whom keeping up appearances was a matter of honour.”
Maggie Smith, who has won two Oscars (best actress, The Prime of Miss Jean Brody and best supporting actress, California Suite), will be seen in the autumn in a third collaboration with Julian Fellowes, a film, From Time To Time.
Miss smith also appeared in the successful Harry Potter series of films.
Miss Smith plays Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, a widowed woman in a pre-First World War English estate. She is supportive of her son but severe with his American wife whom he married for money.
Advertised as “A House Divided” in the Radio Times, TV critic Alison Graham describes the ITV drama as a reprise of some of the themes which earned Fellowes an Oscar for Gosford Park: Fellowes has “taken his own Gosford Park, lightened its many dark shadows, thrown in a bit of Upstairs, Downstairs and a smidgen of E M Forster and come up with Downton Abbey.”
In Gosford Park, Fellowes says, in the same publication, “I had the privilege of watching at director Robert Altman’s elbow while she [Maggie Smith] demonstrated her immediate and absolute, grasp of the workings of this woman’s mind, a woman to whom keeping up appearances was a matter of honour.”
Maggie Smith, who has won two Oscars (best actress, The Prime of Miss Jean Brody and best supporting actress, California Suite), will be seen in the autumn in a third collaboration with Julian Fellowes, a film, From Time To Time.
Miss smith also appeared in the successful Harry Potter series of films.
