60+ Maggie Smith Quotes (Legendary, Iconic And Versatile)

Maggie Smith is a British actress who has been in the entertainment industry for over six decades. She is best known for her roles in the Harry Potter films and the BBC television series Downton Abbey. She has won two Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a BAFTA Award.

Top 10 Maggie Smith Quotes

1. People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.
2. I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.
3. I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.
4. When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.
5. Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.
6. I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything.
7. There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.
8. There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.
9. An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.
10. It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.

Maggie Smith Short Quotes

• Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.
• Try not to cry too much because it can be pretty heart-breaking and pretty hard.
• Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class.
• We can't escape the shadow, so the best thing we can do is notice the light and be open to it.
• The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.
• I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much.
• Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more.
• My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.
• I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.
• It's easy to get bogged down in bad news.

Maggie Smith Famous Quotes And Sayings

I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much. I think of Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy. But they always seem to be fairly successful, so it's a bit baffling as to why everybody has to be treated as if they were five-years-old. — Maggie Smith

The chemotherapy was very peculiar, something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself, a very nasty thing. I used to go to treatment on my own, and nearly everybody else was with somebody. I wouldn't have liked that. Why would you want to make anybody sit in those places? — Maggie Smith

I had been feeling a little rum. I didn't think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails, and I don't know what the future holds, if anything. — Maggie Smith

I had a very good English teacher who said to me that she thought I ought to do it. She - I don't know, she saw something thank goodness because I think if it hadn't been encouraged by somebody that serious, I'm not sure what would've happened to me. — Maggie Smith

People think of you differently if you've been in their homes. They think they own you because they watched you while they were eating dinner, or they can turn you up or down, or even freeze you. — Maggie Smith

The drama school was in Oxford - and it's funny to think of it, but in those days when I started out the University was nearly all male. And they certainly weren't mixed. — Maggie Smith

My kids are really learning everything from scratch. It's our job to be their tour guides and camp counselors and orientation people. That's a weird responsibility, especially in a world that feels as good as it feels bad. — Maggie Smith

I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect. — Maggie Smith

I'd done "Gosford Park," a film that Julian Fellowes had written that Robert Altman directed. — Maggie Smith

I am just surprised to be doing anything at my age actually. When you think of where I am now and where I've come from, I am very pleased and very grateful to be standing up and delivering Julian's great lines. — Maggie Smith

I said 'It can't go on' and he said 'No, it can't.' Honestly, I don't think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him. — Maggie Smith

I'm far, far, far from that. But of course, that's one of the joys of acting is that you can move up in the world, even if - you know, in the characters that you're playing, even if you don't. — Maggie Smith

I think everybody who was in it thought they were all going to be Eartha Kitt or be big stars. That didn't happen, but it was a wake-up call to have one's first professional job on Broadway, I must say. — Maggie Smith

Where you get people who want to take a picture of you or take a picture of them with you. — Maggie Smith

The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them. — Maggie Smith

It's funny to be pigeonholed so late in life but there we are. — Maggie Smith

I'm just glad to get any role... the fact that they're all 90 is neither here nor there! Actually, it was Hook that started it. I think it was Peggy Ashcroft who couldn't do the part and somebody was asked how old was I and would I be able to do the part, and the person replied "92" very quickly. And so I've been stuck ever since! But I'm actually very grateful. — Maggie Smith

I feel now like a hinge between generations, which is strange. It just happened recently. I think it's because my daughter is so much like me at her age. I feel like I'm reliving my own mother's experience of raising me. — Maggie Smith

I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. — Maggie Smith

Sort of what you do in drama school when asked to play something way out of your reach. Anyway, we used to laugh a lot about that. I used to say I'm not going to act old, Penelope. I'll just be myself. — Maggie Smith

I'm so moved to hear Celia Johnson again, so lovely. — Maggie Smith

It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see…I can only hope that’s correct, because there’s an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others. — Maggie Smith

I'm not my mother. And so I'm not raising my kids in the same way. I don't respond in the same way. We don't spend our days in the same way because I don't necessarily enjoy the same things she likes to do. — Maggie Smith

One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one's still acting. — Maggie Smith

If someone is going to talk about the process of making a film, it should be the director. — Maggie Smith

The last couple of years have been a write-off, though I'm beginning to feel like a person now. My energy is coming back. — Maggie Smith

It made it feel impossible, quite honestly, because filming - you film come rain, come shine, come whatever. And it did rain a lot. And of course, that's what she must have gone through. Of course it rained; of course it was cold... But, you know, it really was quite hard to be out there in the rain. — Maggie Smith

I'm hopeless - all I know is that time is going past so fast. — Maggie Smith

There were male colleges, and there were very few female colleges. — Maggie Smith

There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk. — Maggie Smith

I had no idea that that was around in the family anywhere. Maybe it never was. But - so they broke the way for me, if you know what I mean. I have no idea where I got the idea from to do what I do. But I think they - Ian and Alistair, my brothers kind of opened a lot of doors for me onto the world - you know, made it seem to be a very, very interesting place. — Maggie Smith

Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. — Maggie Smith

A lot of writing about being a mother is not so much writing about the kids themselves. They become placeholders for the shift that happens when you're suddenly in charge of other people. — Maggie Smith

I think there's always great tension because there never seems to be enough - there is always pressure. There's always pressure because there isn't enough time. There's never enough time for a movie, it seems to me. Never. — Maggie Smith

There was nobody in the family who had ever done anything like that before. My brothers - I had two brothers. They were twins. They both became architects. They were both six years older. — Maggie Smith

There are responsibilities which are parental responsibilities and those are the types of things we prepare the next generation for, but no one tells you how to answer the kids' questions in the backseat of the car when they want to know what the world is for or where they came from or why any of this is happening. — Maggie Smith

I just did adore Daniel - Daniel Radcliffe, who I had worked with before "Harry Potter" and spent a long time telling all the producers they had to see him because I thought he was so terrific. And it's been sad thinking about it because of Alan Rickman. — Maggie Smith

I think he [Leonardo DiCaprio] is a terrific actor. And I've - I've been rooting and voting for him since "Gilbert Grape." I thought he was so amazing in that one. He was a young man, really very young boy. — Maggie Smith

Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but I came out on the side of light more often than not. — Maggie Smith

It was - it's always very nice to be somebody rather grand. — Maggie Smith

Life Lessons by Maggie Smith

1. Maggie Smith has taught us to never give up on our dreams, no matter how difficult they may seem. She has also shown us that hard work and dedication can take us far in life. Lastly, she has demonstrated that age is not a barrier to success, and that we can achieve great things at any stage of life.