Unpredictable and wickedly acerbic actor with few peers

The trouble with Maggie Smith is that she's watchable in everything and worked like a trouper from the age of 17. A twotime Oscar winner (as well as the proud owner of a Tony for Lettice and Lovage), she left few stones unturned, which makes it hard to do justice to her talent and range. Those who saw her on stage rave about her versatility, but she was just as unpredictable in films and on TV.

- CHARLOTTE O'SULLIVAN

Smith, who has died aged 89, is best known for her wickedly acerbic line readings in Downton Abbey. While utterly plausible as a despotic, bitchy and libidinous toff, she could also play downtrodden and democratic, naive and clenched. With the baleful eyes of a bloodhound and an exquisitely raspy voice, she grips you every which way, and her influence on other actors (from Susan Sarandon to Kathryn Hahn) and even musicians (I’d argue she paved the way for Florence Welch) can’t be overstated. To tweak a line of dialogue from one of Smith’s most famous films (as beleaguered Scottish schoolmistress Jean Brodie), if intelligence is to your taste, this woman will give you a feast.

She was funny and intense from the off. Born in Essex, she moved with her family to Oxford when she was four years old, and was cast as Viola in an OUDS production of Twelfth Night (apparently, even when she was at Oxford High School, she knew this was a role she was born to play). Theatre directors like Peter Hall loved her. Before long, she was getting meaty roles at the Old Vic, working alongside Kenneth Williams (a lifelong friend), wowing audiences as Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello, and hanging out with husband-to-be Robert Stephens.

Understandably, Hollywood wanted a piece of her, and she wasn’t the least bit overshadowed by Richard Burton and Liz Taylor in The VIPs. She’s just as good in Jack Clayton’s sublime kitchen-sink drama The Pumpkin Eater. As the semi-gormless Philpot, Smith does full justice to Penelope Mortimer’s jolting novel about delusion, domesticity and infidelity (Philpot’s a thoroughly modern narcissist who, when not bending the ear of the hero, Jo, is secretly shagging Jo’s husband). Smith ensures that the character of Philpot is both chilling and an absolute hoot.