Maggie Smith: A Biography (42 page)

As Beatrice and Benedick in Franco Zeffirelli's exuberant Sicilian production of
Much Ado About Nothing
at the Old Vic in 1965, Maggie and Robert Stephens forged a relationship with the public that established them as favourites for several years

Maggie plays the flute to a suitably unimpressed Peter Ustinov in a comedy of conmen,
Hot Millions
(1968): ‘A woman's place is in the ‘ome, innit, making money!’

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
(1969), set in Edinburgh in the 1930s, proved a career game-changer for Maggie at home and in Hollywood. A glacial but glamorous admirer of Mussolini and General Franco, Miss Brodie believed her pupils were the crème de la crème: ‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.’

Tigbourne Court, the Edwin Lutyens house near Guildford that Maggie and Robert bought and shared with her brother and sister-in-law in 1968. The house was sold in 1981

Proud mum with second son Toby, two weeks old in May 1969

Maggie celebrates her Oscar victory on the night of the Hollywood ceremony in the stalls bar of the Old Vic, after the first performance of
The Beaux’ Stratagem,
with Robert and (to his left) their friend and dresser Christopher Downes

As Hedda Gabler, a performance of neurotic intensity at the National, and Maggie's favourite production, directed by Ingmar Bergman in 1970

Maggie keeps an eye on Robert drinking backstage at the Old Vic in 1971

The calm before the storm in a Malibu beachfront rental while performing Noël Coward's
Design for Living
at the Ahmanson

Marriage in transit at the airport with Christopher and Toby in 1972

On set with George Cukor, director of
Travels with My Aunt
(1972), who adored everything she did as Graham Greene's gorgon Aunt Augusta; he also adored Maggie herself

Two classic roles for BBC TV in 1972: a cruel and mocking Portia in
The Merchant of Venice
and an even wealthier heiress, Epifania Fitzfassenden, in Bernard Shaw's
The Millionairess,
a glorious display of high-style bravura and limpid radiance

Pain and passion in close-up relationships: Robert and Maggie as Elyot and Amanda in the quarrel scene of Coward's
Private Lives,
a watershed production directed by John Gielgud at the Queen's in 1972; and running free with Timothy Bottoms in
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing
(1973), an unlikely movie romance vitiated by incurable disease