Why Dame Maggie is the perfect companion
Early in 1967 Maggie Smith phoned me at my office at the Daily Mail. ‘Would you come to the flat for a drink tonight?’ she asked. ‘There’s something Bobby and I want to discuss with you.’
Bobby was her lover and National Theatre co-star Robert Stephens and what they wanted to discuss was this: they planned to get married but Robert’s divorce from his second wife Tarn Bassett was not yet finalised and to complicate matters somewhat, Maggie was pregnant.
How, they wondered, could they keep this latter information from the press and I thought, ‘Hold on a minute, I am the bloody press!’
But I liked them both and so we devised a plan: Maggie would take a sabbatical until the baby was born and if any other newspaper came sniffing around meantime she would call me at once and I would write the story exclusively and sympathetically. Very unprofessional of me, I know, and if my employers had found out I was sitting on a front-page scoop, they would probably have fired me. But I reckoned Maggie’s pregnancy was nobody’s business but hers and Robert’s.
In the event, the divorce came through and they married 10 days before the baby (now known as the actor Chris Larkin) was born, with no scandalous headlines ensuing. So I never did get to write that story.
Flash forward 47 years and Dame Maggie is named a Companion of Honour in this year’s Birthday Honours List. Nobody could have deserved it more. I haven’t seen her now for a long time but I still retain much affection and admiration for her as one of our greatest actresses.
She is a witty and engaging companion with an occasionally acerbic tongue. Of a fellow actress she once said to me: ‘She couldn’t act her way out of a toilet.’
By contrast, Maggie can act her way into and out of anything. Her range is phenomenal: Lady Macbeth or Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello? No problem. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie? An Oscar-winning performance. More recently she has been an inveterate scene-stealer as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series and the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey. The list goes on and on. In a career that has so far lasted 62 years, she has appeared in more films, TV and theatre productions than you could shake a stick at.
Whatever the medium she seems to conquer it with ease and in the process the numerous awards she has received include two Oscars, five Baftas, three Emmys, three Golden Globes and a Tony. Few if any other actors can match that.
Now at the age of 79 and having survived breast cancer six years ago, she could be seen to be in the Indian Summer of her career except that when you look at her achievements and volume of work, it always seems to have been high summer for her and still is.
Of course, success is always more impressive to the onlooker than to the person apparently enjoying it and, like everyone else, she must have had her share of defeats and disappointments. If so, she keeps quiet about them.
In her private life, her marriage to Robert Stephens ended in 1974, five years after the birth of their second son, the actor Toby Stephens, and her second husband and the love of her life, the playwright Beverley Cross, whom she married in 1975, died in 1998. In an American TV interview last year she confessed to missing him greatly and said that work – ‘looking forward to whatever other old biddy comes along’ – helped to assuage the loneliness.
Next year she will be seen in the sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel so thankfully for her – and us – the old biddies keep coming along. She is a national treasure and we should cherish her.
Companions do not receive a title or other status, but may use the letters ‘CH’ after their name. The Order’s badge is a gold oval-shaped medallion featuring an oak tree. A shield with the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom hangs from one branch and a knight in armour is depicted next to it.
The badge, topped with an imperial crown, has a blue enamelled border bearing the Order’s motto, ‘In action faithful and in honour clear’ (Alexander Pope’s description in his Epistle To Mr Addison of James Craggs, later used on Craggs’s monument in Westminster Abbey).
Men wear the insignia on a ribbon (red with golden border threads) around their necks, and women on a bow at the left shoulder. Recipients include Dame Judi Dench, Sir John Major, Bridget Riley, Professor Stephen Hawking, Sir David Attenborough and David Hockney.
www.royal.gov.uk/monarchuk/honours/companionsofhonour.aspx
Bobby was her lover and National Theatre co-star Robert Stephens and what they wanted to discuss was this: they planned to get married but Robert’s divorce from his second wife Tarn Bassett was not yet finalised and to complicate matters somewhat, Maggie was pregnant.
How, they wondered, could they keep this latter information from the press and I thought, ‘Hold on a minute, I am the bloody press!’
But I liked them both and so we devised a plan: Maggie would take a sabbatical until the baby was born and if any other newspaper came sniffing around meantime she would call me at once and I would write the story exclusively and sympathetically. Very unprofessional of me, I know, and if my employers had found out I was sitting on a front-page scoop, they would probably have fired me. But I reckoned Maggie’s pregnancy was nobody’s business but hers and Robert’s.
In the event, the divorce came through and they married 10 days before the baby (now known as the actor Chris Larkin) was born, with no scandalous headlines ensuing. So I never did get to write that story.
Flash forward 47 years and Dame Maggie is named a Companion of Honour in this year’s Birthday Honours List. Nobody could have deserved it more. I haven’t seen her now for a long time but I still retain much affection and admiration for her as one of our greatest actresses.
She is a witty and engaging companion with an occasionally acerbic tongue. Of a fellow actress she once said to me: ‘She couldn’t act her way out of a toilet.’
By contrast, Maggie can act her way into and out of anything. Her range is phenomenal: Lady Macbeth or Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello? No problem. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie? An Oscar-winning performance. More recently she has been an inveterate scene-stealer as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series and the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey. The list goes on and on. In a career that has so far lasted 62 years, she has appeared in more films, TV and theatre productions than you could shake a stick at.
Whatever the medium she seems to conquer it with ease and in the process the numerous awards she has received include two Oscars, five Baftas, three Emmys, three Golden Globes and a Tony. Few if any other actors can match that.
Now at the age of 79 and having survived breast cancer six years ago, she could be seen to be in the Indian Summer of her career except that when you look at her achievements and volume of work, it always seems to have been high summer for her and still is.
Of course, success is always more impressive to the onlooker than to the person apparently enjoying it and, like everyone else, she must have had her share of defeats and disappointments. If so, she keeps quiet about them.
In her private life, her marriage to Robert Stephens ended in 1974, five years after the birth of their second son, the actor Toby Stephens, and her second husband and the love of her life, the playwright Beverley Cross, whom she married in 1975, died in 1998. In an American TV interview last year she confessed to missing him greatly and said that work – ‘looking forward to whatever other old biddy comes along’ – helped to assuage the loneliness.
Next year she will be seen in the sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel so thankfully for her – and us – the old biddies keep coming along. She is a national treasure and we should cherish her.
What is the Order of the Companions of Honour?
Founded by King George V in 1917, the award recognises services of national importance by men and women. Membership of the Order is limited to the sovereign and 65 ordinary members, although foreigners can become honorary companions.Companions do not receive a title or other status, but may use the letters ‘CH’ after their name. The Order’s badge is a gold oval-shaped medallion featuring an oak tree. A shield with the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom hangs from one branch and a knight in armour is depicted next to it.
The badge, topped with an imperial crown, has a blue enamelled border bearing the Order’s motto, ‘In action faithful and in honour clear’ (Alexander Pope’s description in his Epistle To Mr Addison of James Craggs, later used on Craggs’s monument in Westminster Abbey).
Men wear the insignia on a ribbon (red with golden border threads) around their necks, and women on a bow at the left shoulder. Recipients include Dame Judi Dench, Sir John Major, Bridget Riley, Professor Stephen Hawking, Sir David Attenborough and David Hockney.
www.royal.gov.uk/monarchuk/honours/companionsofhonour.aspx