Maggie Smith is always a delight in every role, be it whimsical, sarcastic, dry aristocratic and even downright grumpy.
In her latest movie, The Lady in the Van, Maggie Smith absolutely steals the show.
While the movie isn’t actually supposed to be about Maggie Smith’s character, the odorous old Miss Shepherd who lives in a van in a writer’s driveway for 15 years, that character quickly becomes the center.
Reviews are in for the movie and Maggie Smith, by overwhelming accolade, is the film’s saving grace.
Kyle Smith of the New York Post said of Maggie Smith, “Smith’s appeal, just, holds together a thin plot upon which Bennett, who wrote the script, and director Nicholas Hytner have loaded gimmicks, such as a thin running gag in which Bennett’s personality splits into a “writer” and a “person,” both of whom are played by the same actor using special effects and who argue tiresomely about whether the homeless woman is simply irresistible great material or a damaged human being in need of aid.”
Rebecca Keegan of the Los Angeles Times captured Maggie Smith’s character perfectly when she said, “It takes a special kind of actress to play a woman who has clearly soiled herself as regal and dignified. That actress is Maggie Smith, who, as a sick, old, cantankerous neighborhood vagabond named Miss Shepherd, rides an ambulance wheelchair lift like a queen on her motorized throne, her bright blue eyes shining down on her subjects below.”
This looks like such an amazing movie!
But, to Maggie Smith, is this just another crotchety old lady role in a long line of them? Last month she expressed a little concern that this could be all she’s good for anymore.
She told the BBC, “Now I’m stuck with being a mean old cow. I’m stuck with that, but you know, so be it.”
Maggie Smith just does “mean old cow” so incredibly well!
Have you seen Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van?