Acclaimed star of stage and screen Dame Maggie Smith is to have a season of films devoted to her work at the BFI Southbank.
The season, which will span rare early work from the 1950s to more mainstream screenings including Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, will run at the Southbank cinema throughout December and January.
Smith, who was given the Special Award at the 2010 Olivier Awards in recognition of her contribution to the London stage, began her career on the stage of the Oxford Playhouse before heading to the West End and then joining Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre in 1963.
The BFI season features a host of treats for fans of Smith’s more theatrical screen work, from a rare surviving tape of Smith starring in Somerset Maugham’s For Services Rendered in 1959 to her 1965 performance as Desdemona opposite Olivier’s Othello and her 1967 performance as Much Ado About Nothing’s Beatrice opposite her late husband Robert Stephens. More recent works include her 1993 outing in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer, directed by Richard Eyre, and The Last September, theatre director Deborah Warner’s first feature film.
More information about the season can be found on the BFI website.