I didn’t know her personally, and she obviously lived a good long life, but…all the way back to when I was a kid, she was in everything. She, Robin Williams, and Angela Lansbury were the first actors whose names I knew. I was born in 1986, and Maggie Smith was Granny Wendy in “Hook,” the Mother Superior in “Sister Act,” and Mrs Medlock in “The Secret Garden.” Then as a teenager, I got really into period piece movies, and she was in “Gosford Park” (new in theaters at the time) and “A Room With a View” (older, but I saw it for the first time in 2003).
And, of course, she was Professor McGonagall in “Harry Potter,” because it was such a no-brainer casting choice. I was hugely into Harry Potter and saw the third movie in theaters with all my friends for my eighteenth birthday.
I started watching “Downton Abbey” partly because she was in it; my wedding party and I were discussing “Downton Abbey” as we waited in the back of the church to walk down the aisle. I watched Maggie Smith in “Downton Abbey” while I was breastfeeding my first baby. Maggie Smith was always somewhere, and made me think of so many good memories whenever I saw her. My daughters are Harry Potter fans now, so we’ve been seeing quite a lot of Professor McGonagall over the last few years.
I’m not falling into a deep depression or anything, but I just feel sad that she died.