It is a testament to the power of the late British actress Dame Maggie Smith that other eminent actors – though only male ones, as far as I can see – accused her of upstaging them.
Richard Burton complained that in Anthony Asquith’s 1963 film The VIPs, she didn’t merely steal a big scene with him, “she committed grand larceny”. After making the 1978 Neil Simon film California Suite with her (for which Smith won her second Academy Award), Michael Caine is reported to have phoned Michael Palin, who was to be her co-star in the 1982 film The Missionary. “Watch her,” Caine reportedly warned. “She’ll have that scene from under your feet.”
More recent audiences will recognise Smith’s arresting power in her portrayal of Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in the long-running television series Downton Abbey and its two films. For film critic Peter Bradshaw, even “in the smallest of roles she set her own terms and every other actor was her satellite”.
