Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Maggie Smith: A Biography

Maggie Smith: A Biography by Michael Coveney   353 pp.

Multiple award winning actress, Maggie Smith, has had a varied and extremely successful career on stage and both the big and small screens. Lately she as had a popular resurgence as Violet Crowley in "Downton Abbey," Muriel in "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," and the intrepid Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies. Ms. Smith is an extremely private person so most of this book consists of a litany of her performances and reviews of those performances with only her major personal life events included. There are also anecdotes about her stealing scenes and butting heads with performers like Richard Burton and Lawrence Olivier, who really disliked her. Coveney wrote the original version of this biography several years ago. This edition is an update of that volume. I think the best part of the whole book is the epilogue where the author describes a meeting he had with Dame Maggie. I have been a fan of Maggie Smith for years and found this book disappointing.

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