Dame Maggie Smith - Downton's Cheerleader

She may play Downton Abbey’s redoubtable matriarch, but behind the scenes Dame Maggie Smith is mother hen to the newbies and loves to play word games with her co-stars, discovers Juliet Rieden.

- Juliet Rieden

As the haughty Dowager Countess of Grantham, Dame Maggie Smith’s stare can silence the lustiest of opponents, while her caustic retorts wither at 20 paces. But I’m pleased to discover that when the cameras stop rolling Dame Maggie is a pussycat, especially to the knee-trembling newcomers on the set of one of the most iconic period dramas of the decade.

There are no special demands from the multi-award-winning veteran actress, no diva turns or trailer one-upmanship. “I don’t think that’s very British,” laughs Downton Abbey’s creator Julian Fellowes, who is himself an Oscar-winner for his 2001 film Gosford Park.

“She’s very nice to the young ones and when they’re starting out, particularly at the beginning of the show, when several of them had very little experience indeed, Maggie was very much the kind of team leader in all that time.”

The 84-year-old British icon is certainly the jewel in Julian Fellowes’ Downton stately home crown and it’s no surprise that Dame Maggie’s role is central as the TV series jumps to the silver screen. “I’m a huge Dame Maggie fan,” Julian explains. “She’s extraordinary really; a great actress. You say that, you’ve said it all. She has that wonderful thing that great actors do have of being able to play several things at once, and so she can be funny and moving simultaneously. She can go from one situation where she’s very angry or sad and five minutes later you’re rocking with laughter; yet she doesn’t turn into a different person.

“A lesser actor becomes a different person when they’re doing a different kind of story so you have to write for them rather carefully, but Maggie always preserves her central thread of a character and never loses touch with it, so she is very rewarding to write for.”