Maggie Smith is an actress.
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith , ( born 28 December 1934 ) , known as Maggie Smith , is an English actress . She received Tony Award nominations for Private Lives ( 1975 ) and Night and Day ( 1979 ) , before winning the 1990 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage . She has won a record four BAFTA Awards for Best Actress , including for A Private Function ( 1984 ) and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne ( 1988 ) , a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress for Tea With Mussolini ( 1999 ) , and three Golden Globe Awards . She won an Emmy Award in 2003 for My House in Umbria , to become one of the few actresses to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting , and starred as Lady Violet Crawley , Dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abbey ( 2010 -- 15 ) , for which she won three Emmys , her first non-ensemble Screen Actors Guild Award and her third Golden Globe .