MAggie Smith didn’t seem to care about being loved in her performances, but she was as universally adored as an actor can be. The two things were connected; Anyone who watched her knew that there was an unflinching honesty behind her ruthless humor and her ability to shed light in an instant on the most terrifying abysses of the human condition.

She found life hysterically funny and unbearably painful. Her company was electrifying – she was even sharper and wittier than her legions of fans imagined. But since the death of her husband, Beverley, in 1998, she has often been lonely, and the fun has been a way to laugh at the inevitable misery that draws people to great acting. It testifies to the tragic business of life, but at the same time offers an escape from it.

She was a few steps ahead of everyone else, and several times smarter. She was never as good as she wanted to be, and when she was, she created obstacles for herself. Her last appearance on stage, at the Bridge Theatre, when she was 85, was as 102-year-old Brunhilde Pomsel in Christopher Hampton’s A German Life – a monologue in which one of Goebbels’ secretaries lied about her life for 100 minutes.

Her character laughed gleefully about her youth, poured scathing contempt on the Nazis, lamented the injustice done to her; unspoken was the creeping certainty that this woman knew she had done wrong. Maggie herself was determined to remind her audience – and reassure herself – that she had played opposite Olivier, played Hedda Gabler for Ingmar Bergman and made films with John Ford, George Cukor and Joe Mankiewicz. She learned everything in advance. It was – to be honest – a triumph from the moment it was announced.

She came into the rehearsal room for a day, she had a director she trusted (Jonathan Kent), and it must have felt too easy. So she got sick and had to go to the hospital for almost two weeks. Maybe she was quite ill; Maybe she convinced herself that it was. But she left herself virtually no time to rehearse. By the time she returned, she had made it almost impossible for herself to continue, and she was happy. Her performance was as radically naturalistic as anything I’ve ever seen, though her timing was still as precise as if she had played Wilde.

In recent years we often went to ballet together. Sometimes she went alone and stood in the stage manager’s corner. She adored the young dancers for their talent, their grace and (perhaps above all) for their uncompromising and self-sacrificing dedication to their art. She must have seen herself in it, and it was always possible to see in her the young Maggie, the enchanting revue artist who, through her unparalleled gifts and fierce dedication to her craft, became a great, great actor – greater than she ever imagined. are.