The accomplished actress still knows how to bring down the house.
Quartet, a wryly funny and often touching late-life aria about aged opera singers at a British retirement home premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.
Fans of her imperiously proper Dowager Countess of Grantham on the TV sensation Downton Abbey, will revel in Quartet.
That the notoriously press-averse legend is seated here at an upscale eatery is a bit of a miracle.
Blame her reluctance on a "ghastly" male reporter who made her cry during her very first interview when she was starting out in the late '50s.
"The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them," Maggie Smith explains.
Her presence today, however, is mainly due to the considerable efforts of three renowned men who made sure she simply could not refuse.
A few good men
First, let us give thanks to Dustin Hoffman, 75, who has interrupted his own award-winning acting career to make his directorial debut with Quartet. Smith would only agree to speak on behalf of the movie, which received multiple standing ovations at its initial screening, if Hoffman were at her side.
Hoffman sounds as in awe of Smith as he did in 1994 or so at Wyndam's Theatre in London, where she was once again bringing the house down as a 90-something Alzheimer's sufferer looking back at her life in Edward Albee's Three Tall Women.
"I had never met her," Hoffman recalls, even though their professional lives intersected when they both did Steven Spielberg's Hook in 1991."
No. 2 is Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood hotshot and master orchestrator of many a successful Oscar campaign who sees Smith as the key to raising Quartet's profile.
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