Maggie smith biography book reviews
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Maggie Smith: A Biography, by Michael Coveney: The facts are all here, yet she remains an enigmatic figure
In his epilogue, Michael Coveney reveals that when he first proposed a biography to the famously publicity-averse Dame Maggie Smith, she seemed horrified by the idea, exclaiming: “Ooh, how absolutely ghastly. How absolutely awful. I can't think of anything worse… Ooh, but there's nothing to write about… I haven't done anything. I don't know what it is I do.”
That said, during a subsequent conversation she invited him backstage after a Broadway matinee performance of Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage. At that meeting, while still appearing resistant to the idea of the book, she gave him the telephone number of her then husband Beverley Cross, who she would “warn”' to expect a call. When Coveney, a critic, spoke to Cross, the latter was encouraging.
All this took place in the early Nineties in preparation for a previous edition of this book, but it remains one of the sprigh
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Description for Maggie Smith: A BiographyPaperback. The definitive biography of Maggie Smith, grande dame of scen and screen, and a national treasure; named best memoir at the Woman & Home Readers' Choice Awards and Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. Num Pages: 368 pages. BIC Classification: ANB; APB; APF; BGF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 131 x 198 x 23. vikt in Grams: 316.
'Coveney is the only writer who could get beneath Smith's skin, capturing her steeliness and vulnerability' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY From her days as a star of West End comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path has led to international renown and numerous accolades including two Academy Awards. Recently she has been as prominent on our screens as ever, with high-profile roles as the formidable Dowager Countess of Grantham in DOWNTON ABBEY, as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the HARRY POTTER movie fran
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When theater critic Michael Coveney asked Maggie Smith if he could write her biography, she replied, “Ooh, how absolutely ghastly. How absolutely awful. I can’t think of anything worse.” But the reclusive Smith, one of our greatest living actresses and beloved by a new generation for her work in the “Harry Potter” movies and on the TV show “Downton Abbey,” reluctantly gave Coveney the go-ahead. She did not speak to him much herself, but she let him speak to some of her colleagues, her second husband Beverley Cross, and her two sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, who are both actors themselves. The result is an authorized look at her career and her life that was first published in 1992 and is now updated to include her current credits.
Smith was born in 1934 to a working class family, and her mother was a cold and penny-pinching stickler for propriety. Smith’s brother Ian noted that there was antagonism between mother and daughter but it “never erupted into the open; it just