The absolute legend of stage and screen passed away on 27 September last year at the age of 89. Smith was perhaps best known to many for playing Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films along with roles in the likes of Downton Abbey, Sister Act, and the Lady in the Van.
With a career spanning eight decades, tributes from co-stars, politicians and royalty flooded in for Dame Maggie upon her death being announced, and her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens said she ‘passed away peacefully’.
“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they added in a statement.
After his mum had encouraged him to go away for filming, Toby has now revealed he was sadly unable to make it to the hospital on time to be with her.
Speaking to The Sunday Times over the weekend (16 February), he explained what happened in their final moments together: “She was in hospital. She was supposed to be coming out, but the last two years of her life had been a decline.
“She would get worse, then she would get better, then she would get worse [again]. So I said, ‘Look I’ve got this film’, and before I could even ask her, she said, ‘Go do it. God, you don’t want to hang round here, I’m fine’.”
The star died just a day before her son finished filming upcoming New Zealand horror film, Marmara. However, her eldest son Chris was able to be with her at the time.
And Toby admitted he also felt sadness in not being able to be there to support him.
Dame Maggie with Chris and Toby in 1971. (Dove/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
“I was so sad not to be with him, I found that very difficult,” he said. “But she was no longer aware – and it allowed me some space to actually get my head round what had happened.”
Toby made his film debut back in 1992 in Orlando and has since appeared as the likes of Bond villain Gustav Graves in 2002’s Die Another Day, Captain Flint in Black Sails, and Poseidon in Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
He added how touched he had been by the response to his mum’s death.
“The thing that really got me was: it’s very rare that you have actors that everyone likes. And she had spent her life not thinking of herself like that, which is very winning,” he said.
“If she had thought of herself like that it would have been ghastly. But she wasn’t like that at all. She had self-knowledge, self-belief. Like most actors, though, she was riven with self-doubt.”
