In Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith is playing a toned-down version of the character she played in Gosford Park.

If you haven't already make sure you watch Brideshead revisited.

You have Phoebe Nicholls (who played Lady Rose's mother) and Diana Quick (Polina Molotova in The Death of Stalin and the Queen in the eponymous BBC series) doing some similar social machinations in the background of an absolutely stacked period-drama with a cast including Jeremy Irons, Laurence Olivier, and John Gielgud.

W… what is a weekend?

I didn't know Diana Riggs died :( She really brought the Queen of Thorns to life.

<3

This is a really good point. Unless there is some tech angle these things don't usually make HN.

I wonder how much of it has to do with the overlap between tech nerds and Harry Potter nerds.

Don’t forget The First Wives Club! RIP

Showing my age a bit here, but when I think of her this film is always what I'm reminded of. That phrase "I am Miss Jean Brodie... and I am in my prime" in her frightfully posh Scottish accent rattles around my head quite a bit for some reason.

I've always thought of her as being well-known, but apparently it was Downton Abbey that really made her properly famous, which she didn't really like: https://x.com/lewispringle/status/1839680373774581849

But the book and movie are set in the 1930s, though I guess 1930s through a 1960s sensibility.

I think her character Prof. McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies drew heavily on her much earlier role as that other Scottish school teacher, Jean Brodie.

Lovely, thank you for sharing!

> I don't think you can understand the 1960s

I think the same of "The Graduate (1967)" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cKafIqhEvk

Note - this is not a movie she is in.

I was fortunate enough to see her in that on stage. She and Nick Farrell were on top form. It's a highlight.

I shed real tears when I saw that she had passed. The other week, with James Earl Jones, as well. We're losing a generation of actors with real, deep roots in theatre, who then adapted to TV and cinema as those media matured. They're a bridge generation, and their experience will not be replicated. The profession and the culture are the poorer for their loss.

This is a striking and sobering comment, sauceymew.

We’ll be lucky to live that long, and sorry to see them fall.

(Edit: s/fail/fall)