British actress Maggie Smith dies aged 89, BBC reports

British actress Maggie Smith, an award-winning Shakespearian actress and double Oscar winner who later appeared in the Harry Potter films, has died aged 89, the BBC reported on Friday.

One of the few actors to win the treble of an Oscar (two), Emmy (four), and Tony, Smith's long career started on the stage in the 1950s.

But for many younger fans in the 21st century, she was best known as Professor McGonagall in all seven Harry Potter movies, and the Dowager Countess in the hit TV series and movie spin-offs of Downton Abbey, a role that seemed tailor-made for an actress known for purse-lipped asides and malicious cracks.

Her first Academy Award nomination was for her turn playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier's Othello in 1965, before winning the Oscar for her role as an Edinburgh schoolmistress in 1969's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

She won her second Oscar for her supporting role in the 1978 comedy California Suite, a performance that prompted co-star Michael Caine to say: "Maggie didn't just steal the film, she committed grand larceny."

Other critically acclaimed roles included Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest on the West End stage, a 92-year-old bitterly fighting senility in Edward Albee's play Three Tall Women, and her part in 2001 black comedy movie Gosford Park.

In 1990 Smith was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and became a Dame. (Reuters)