Maggie Smith (1934-) is a two time Oscar®-winning English actress. She has acted on stage, film, and television for almost the last 70 years. Smith has appeared in over 50 films, and is one of Britain’s most recognizable actresses. Her IMDb page shows 84 acting credits since 1955. This page ranks 52 Maggie Smith movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts and her movies not released in North America theaters are not included in the rankings.
Maggie Smith Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Maggie Smith Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Maggie Smith movies by co-stars of her movies.
- Sort Maggie Smith movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Maggie Smith movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Maggie Smith movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Maggie Smith movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Maggie Smith movie won.
- Sort Maggie Smith movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
HEY BRUCE
I didn’t know Asta was in The Awful Truth. Thanks for the information.
I suppose the Dan like link is that over his career. Cary had two Thin Woman stars to SUPPORT him and take inferior billing to him the other being Myrna in Mr Blandings and Bachelor Knight [aka Bobbysoxer] !
I don’t include Wings in the Dark there because I think that as Grant was a newcomer Myrna got top billing in that one. In the latter respect “every dog has its day,” is I feel an appropriate adage as we’ve been discussing little Asta !!
Yep…Asta was the dog that Dunne and Grant fought over in court…..Dunne won the case but Grant got visitation….which caused lots of chaos. Cary was up to the task to help out the Thin Man alumni….lol.
Hello Girls and Boys,
The first time i meet Maggie Smith was The Travels with my aunt by Cukor.
I was very surprised because she plaid a woman from the youngness to the old age in a film which was an expression of the old Hollywood and she was filmeD like the Stars in the 30 …with le TRAIN BLEU in Gare de Lyon in Paris, a very high class place.
Then i saw her in the famous Novels of Agatha Christie, and why not after that, the Clash of Titans where she was the Godess Thetis, a film which has nothing to do with the myth of Persée and was clearly Hollywood Mythologie ,what is funny is today she is Minerva in Harry Potter.
BUT every time i saw her i know that i was going to have a very good moment of acting and first of all a very good hearing english talking, something like a royal way to talk.
I never see her on stage, but i followed the série Dontown Abbey and i think in that série all the cast was very, very very good, and it was like a classic music to hear in English,
And for a french it is so different from Maurice Chevalier with Jeannette Mac Donald.
British actors are greats from Olivier to Grant or Diana Rigg to Emma Thompson but my favorite will stay Margareth Rutherford, and not only in Miss Marple part.
A very good idea to give her a page because she is Great.
Oh by the way i did not find the Carrol Baker page, may be it is always in request?
Vacations are finish like the hot days, and now….. you know what!! We are sad
So long
Pierre
Hello Pierre,
great to have you back 🙂
I totally agree with your comment on Downton Abbey…and the acting skills of Dame Maggie!
Hey Lupino….so Maggie Smith the movie star is in a television show? Say it can’t be so….lol.
Bonsoir Lupino,
Nice to meet you on Miss Maggie Smith page, and thank you for your kind comment
À bientôt
Pierre
Welcome back Pierre…you have been missed. Glad Dame Maggie Smith was able to drag you back to UMR..lol. Interesting to see how you became aware of her career. I just recently re-watched Clash of the Titans….seeing her playing the villain was fun….not thinking she did that too many times….but taking on Zeus was fun to watch. Since writing this page I watched The Lady in the Van…a decent movie…but she is excellent as The Lady. Wow…another Downton Abbey fan….I have missed that boat…lol. I have yet to do a Carrol Baker page….sorry about that. Glad your hot days are over. When you comment about your home…I picture the scene in A Good Year….and Russell Crowe and Albert Finney (different times) are sitting in a chair, drinking wine and enjoying the scenery. Good comment….glad to see hear from you. FYI. I recently mentioned you on a podcast I did….
Hello Bruce,
I was in vacation during a long time because my job was like this way and in the mean time i was with family and friends and of course we drink a lot with this hot summer but every week i was on your site and i read lot of comments from Miss Flora to Steve and all the Bobs and of course Lupino and Chris and when i try to do a comment, i was not in my best way, si i prefer to read and not to comment during this two last months.
Thank you very much for your kind answer
See you
Pierre
Hey Pierre…..well you were missed….but glad to know you had a relaxing vacation. The Bobs, Steve, Flora, Lupino and Chris keep me busy for sure……as always…great to hear from you.
In 1993 I was in London and Dame Maggie appeared in The Importance of Being Earnest. She was fantastic in the role. Afterwards I awaited at the side of the theatre and got her autograph. She was very pleasant and courteous.
I think there’s an argument for saying she’s the most successful British actress ever. The Harry Potter movies aside, she’s an incredible body of work in both starring and supporting roles. British stars don’t seem to be caught up so much on box office success. Even if they appear in a couple of flops, it doesn’t seem to affect their careers as badly as American stars. Of course the fact that she is very talented helps.
I think my favourite movie would be California Sweet. She was so funny and her and Michael Caine were great together. Her Miss Jean Brody looks a bit dated now, nevertheless, great in the part.
And of course Downtown Abbey has brought her a new generation of fans.
Hey Chris….thanks for the comment and visit. That is awesome that you saw her on stage….and even more impressive that you got her autograph….but the fact that she was “pleasant and courteous”….is the best news…always good to hear about stars who are that way…when they are away from the spotlight.
The is a good argument….not sure how many would agree with you. Financially…the Harry Potter movies put her in select group of actresses….but….the fact that she might have 50 lines in all 7 movies is a good argument against that thought.
Good to see you liked the Caine/Smith couple in California Suite. That is a very uneven movie…..with some stories being basically pratfalls (Matthau and Pryor parts) and some being good dramas (their part and the Fonda/Alda part). I agree with you about Miss Jean Brody….very dated. As for Downton Abby….I am the only one in the house that has not been sucked into that series….but they all give Smith lots of kudos for her role. Good feedback.
I just love Dame Maggie! As Bob already described, her part in Downton Abbey showed her as an aristocratic “Battleaxe” to boot. Maybe my favorite Smith performance, but as it is, we are talking movies here, not TV shows. Not a big fan, but I’ve been coaxed into watching every single Harry Potter movie…give and take, you see…I thought they got better for adult viewers as the protagonists grew older and now they help adding my Maggie Smith tally to 29 🙂
Interestingly, I haven’t seen her two Oscar movies- haven’t got a clue why those have escaped me. I’m certain I’m forgetting some favs, but the ones that come to mind immediately are her enjoyable scenes as “Bowers”, battling Bette Davis in Death on the Nile, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, A Room with a View, Sister Act, her “Aunt Lavinia Pennyman” in Washington Square (though the Clift/de Havilland version of that one still reigns supreme), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Pumpkin Eater , and her turn on Bob’ very own Myrna Loy as “Dora Charleston” in Murder by Death. I also liked films like The V.I.P.s or Clash of the Titans. I also remember her in an early british movie that George Nader did with her in the late fifties, Nowhere to Go. My favorite Maggie Smith moment, though, happened neither on telly nor on the big screen, but in 1993 at the Aldwych Theatre in London’s West End, when I saw her on stage as Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of being Earnest.
How could I have forgotten California Suite???
Hey Lupino…I will forgive you….but it is tough….forgetting a Caine movie….is pretty serious around these parts…..but we will go with a verbal warning this time……lol.
HEY LUPINO
Great rundown of some of the high points of Dame Margaret’s career but -hey! – don’d be mentioning my Brit actress heroine in the same breath as Myrna Loy. Maggie would have acted little Asta off the screen in The Thin Man series. I wish I had seen Dame Maggie on the stage as you did.
I am not a great Harry Potter fan and my best-liked Dame Maggie performance in recent times is probably in the 2012 Quartet in which Maggie [again a bit of a battleaxe!] plays a prima donna soprano in a retirement home for musicians with great complementary performances from fellow Brits Tom Courtney, perhaps surprisingly the comic Billy Connolly and the wonderful Sir Michael Gambon [Anyone who has been a close personal friend of two of my idols Marlon Brando and Sir Maurice [Michael Caine] Micklewhite must be wonderful in my book].
What enhanced the film even more for me was that some of the operatic numbers were recorded in the early part of the last century by my own fave tenor John McCormack and the film in fact concludes with one of McCormack’s most successfully sung operatic numbers Verdi’s Bela figlia deli’ amore which he recorded in 1910 [with that other great Dame, Nellie Melba] again in 1914 and of course performed on the operatic stage
Indeed the finale was the one weak part of the movie because you don’t see the quartet when they are supposedly belting out the Verdi number as the film closes and the voice of the lead singer [presumably Courtney’s character] was that of a man in the prime of his operatic career and 30 years younger than Courtney and his screen character were and indeed than any of the screen quartet were
As Bruce says above Dustin Hoffman directed it. Bruce gives it a fine 73% but notes meagre box office for it. It had in fact only a limited release over here and I saw it in the Queens Film Theatre Belfast, one of those art houses that Steve loves should attend more regulalrly
Anyway have a good weekend and I look forward to more of your incisive comments when you have the time and opportunity to provide this site with them
Hey Bob….good comment on Lupino’s comment….especially the parts about Michael Caine…..lol.
Hello BOB,
so I have named 2 unmentionable people in my last posts…and now, brave man that I am, I disagree with you…not even my Margaret would have been able to outact little Asta 😉
Thank you for the Information on Dustin’s Quartet, a movie I haven’t seen yet but which I have on DVD. And, last but not least, thank you for your kind words…reminds me of a Crawford/Davis moment (notice the order of “billing” here)…”You mean all this time we could have been friends?”
HI LUPINO
I had to provoke disagreement with you about something or Our Moderator will be claiming I single him out for victimisation!
However he will be disappointed that it was only Asta that you said Maggie couldn’t outact!
I think Asta should have his own Cogerson page and credited with the grosses for those Thin Woman movies
Hey Bob…Asta would have some good movies on his page….the Thin Man movies and The Awful Truth…so you might be right….maybe it is time for his own page….as well as Lassie, Garfield, Rin Tin Tin and Benji.
Hey Lupino….glad you like her role in Downton Abbey. With all of her great roles….that is a huge compliment that it is your favorite Smith role. Glad the Potter movies have helped your tally count reach 29……that is almost 25% of the Smith movies that you have watched. Based on some interviews…she is not too impressed with her role in that franchise. I like your favorites…with the exception of Washington Square…which I have not seen. I just recently re-watched Clash of the Titans…she does a good job of going toe to toe with Sir Olivier.
Wow…both you and Chris saw her in the same play. The Importance of being Earnest must have been a very successful play. Thanks for sharing this information. Always good to read about your view from Germany.
HI BRUCE Thanks for fixing that error. I would like a Ustinov page someday. He was maybe most famous to classic era US audiences for his Nero in the 1951 Quo Vadis. I thought he was too big to play Poirot and TV’s David Suchet is to my mind the nearest to the Poirot of the Christie stories. Quietly spoken in real life Peter could be very funny in interviews and I can recall three amusing stories that he told on the small box –
(1) Peter was an ardent supporter of Liberal/Labour politics in Britain and he said that the night that the staunch Conservative Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 British general electionhe went into a gentlemen’s rest room in the London railway underground complex and sat there for 2 hours in a state of depression.
(2) I don’t think he would have had much time for Joel as Peter liked deflating pomposity! He told of how he [Peter] and Laughton became great friends when making Spartacus and had many chats together on set. One day Charles obviously fishing for a compliment asked Ustinov who he thought were the greatest actors about at that time and Ustinov determined not to be drawn into unduly flattering Charles said Olivier and Guinness. Laughton never spoke to Peter again throughout the making of the rest of Spartacus!.
(3) Peter had the audience in stitches when he recounted how when making the 1967 The Comedians he and Sir Alec Guinness arrived at the location hotel on their own with just a small suitcase each. About an hour later The Burtons arrived with an entourage of secretaries hairdressers etc and several tradesmen hauling Liz’s massive wardrobe, jewellery and stuff [an probably Richard’s booze – Peter didn’t say that but I can be funny too you know]
Anyway thanks for your feedback to my Maggie Smith post. Out of deference to my Teacher I watched Robins Williams in The Night Listener (2006) last evening It was a weird film that built up a reasonable mystery, then let you down at the end with a highly unsatisfactory expose.
You peg it right with your 52% rating of it and your stats for it suggest that “Nobody went to see it but Kirk Douglas and his family” as Burt Lancaster remarked about one of his own movies .But as often was the case its star was better than his material and was highly watchable and indeed looked quite a handsome devil in the beard he sported !!! One for just Die Hard Williams fans and doppelgangers!! [Do you d detect a very slight Dan-like link in that last sentence>]
Hey Bob…..I am here to fix your errors….lol. Good stories about Ustinov. I can imagine all the luggage Taylor/Burton had….I imagine when they traveled it was like a road show traveling…lots and lots of people. As for The Night Listener….I agree with your mini-review….the ending is a letdown…such a letdown…that I do not even remember it. But, as you say…die hard Williams fans should check it out. Thanks for the information and the review.
HI BRUCE
Appreciate the feedback.
Thumbs up Bob