AAs I read through the various drafts of Julian Fellowes’ pilot script for Downton Abbey, it was not lost on me that his new invention of the Dowager Countess (not yet released) bore some resemblance to Lady Trentham in Robert Altman’s film Gosford Park.

That film was a precursor to Downton in many ways. My original pitch to Fellowes was to expand on the Gosford premise and reimagine it as a weekly episodic show. When it looked like ITV might actually greenlight the series, our attention turned to the casting.

Almost the entire cast came to audition before being offered the part, but there was no question of asking Maggie to meet us or deliver a few lines for us – that would have been rude and inappropriate.

The role of Violet Grantham was certainly not meant for Maggie – she had never done a long-running episodic TV series before, so I had little prospect of landing her. But once on the page it became very clear that it was her, and we had to do our best to keep her safe. For reasons I can’t quite remember, she agreed.

I think she knew, as I did, that Fellowes was the best illustrator in this rarefied world and that they could work well together. Ultimately, her contribution to Downton Abbey is immeasurable and without her the show would not have been the huge global hit it became.

During the reading she greeted me warmly, as this was not our first time at the rodeo. It was a complete coincidence that I went to school with her sons, Chris and Toby. Chris and I were contemporaries, Toby a few years younger. Chris and I started working together at the Chichester Festival theater the day after we left school. We did our best to build sets for what was then the studio theater – a marquee. Those sets all fell apart. But it was a start and we loved it.

We loved her performance because she found the truth of the character and never felt ashamed to deliver those barbed wire lines, no matter how archaic or antediluvian they sounded. Of the many aphorisms and ‘zingers’ everyone remembers the rather brilliant ‘What is a weekend’, but still she brought the house down with less remembered bon mot such as her rejection of Lady Sybil’s claim that she was political: ‘No. Only when she is married will her husband tell her what her opinion is.

She was nothing like Violet, except that she was a woman devoted to her family. But she understood Violet. When you’re working on a script, a character is just words on a page and just an idea, a template for what it could be. It wasn’t until we saw the scenes she played to perfection that we got to see one of our greatest movie characters come to life.

A favorite scene? When the widow arrives at the abbey and hears the news of her granddaughter’s death. As always, her presence was steely, but for once there was a chink in the armor as she placed her arm against the wall to steady herself, knowing it could break at any moment.

It is known that she did not suffer fools. In an earlier film from the 1990s I made the mistake of planning a very light first day with no dialogue. On the second morning, she strolled past me and muttered, in my favor, “All they make me do on this show is walk down bloody hallways.” She could be an intimidating presence for anyone, yet I can confirm that the entire cast and crew of Downton, over six seasons and two films, were honored to work with this hugely important star on stage and screen .

She had an especially close relationship with the actors who played the other members of the family. But I always sensed admiration for the other actors in the company who held them in high esteem, such as Jim Carter and Phyllis Logan. Most of all, I remember her enormous generosity and affection for the three young actors who played her granddaughters. She loved all her scenes with Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael and Jessica Brown Findlay and enjoyed seeing them take off at an earlier stage in their careers.

The last Downton film dealt with the death of the Dowager Countess and will now be particularly poignant for her Downton friends and family. I’m so glad we came up with a happy ending for such a remarkable movie character. As she left the set for the final time, the cast and crew lined up outside the Abbey and applauded her as she was whisked away in her car, privileged to have witnessed this brilliant film character brought to life by this extremely talented, yet private person. .