David Hare remembers Maggie Smith | Maggie Smith

“Melancholic men are the most witty of all others,” said Aristotle, in an observation that will resonate with anyone who has spent time with Maggie Smith.

At the turn of the century I wrote a play The breath of lifein which Maggie appeared alongside Judi Dench. One evening Hillary Clinton arrived at the Theater Royal Haymarket with Madeleine Albright. They were both seated on time, but Bill Clinton and Chelsea, delayed by traffic, joined them in the middle of the first act. The next day I was determined to find out what the Clintons had been like. Judi welcomed her into her dressing room and was overwhelmed by her charm. When I asked Maggie what she thought of them, she said she refused to meet them. “Do you think I’ll shake hands with everyone who’s late for your play?”

Maggie’s exact wording stuck with me because it was the use of the word “your” that tugged at my heartstrings. It’s one thing to turn down the opportunity to meet the most famous people in the world, but to do so, with casual loyalty to a playwright, tells you everything you need to know about Maggie’s character. I had long noticed that part of the public wanted to limit Maggie to a repertoire of arguments and bickering. They wanted to do what they had done with Bette Davis: turn a dramatic actor into a vampire. In the 1970s, Maggie felt she had to flee Britain to play Rosalind, Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth in Canada because she believed that no one in Britain understood exactly what kind of actress she wanted to be. There have always been admirers who wanted Maggie to not just be friends with Kenneth Williams, but for her to be Kenneth Williams.

Of course, no one would deny that she was a great comedian. I was a holiday helper at the Old Vic in the 1960s, so I ripped off cards while she played the drag role of Silvia in Farquhar’s The recruiting officeR. I watched in awe, over and over again. It remains one of the freshest and most accomplished comic performances I’ve ever seen. But comedy was also a curse for her because dedicated theatergoers watched her so closely. Her own passion for concentration was met by a parallel and sometimes frightening intensity from the floor. The air was always charged when Maggie appeared. A scrutinizing look seemed to follow her. Once, clean The breath of lifeAt an inopportune moment, she accidentally raised her wrist in a way that sent out a stylized signal of the utmost humor. The audience immediately got involved and roared with laughter. After that she was pathetic. “I don’t know how it happened. This won’t happen again.”

I’m not sure any of us were able to follow Maggie to the depths of her seriousness. She idolized her friend, pianist Murray Perahia, and wanted actors to bring the same intensity to their work as soloists. She was shockingly hard on herself, never realizing that her depressing moods were infecting everyone. If she was depressed, we all were too. She couldn’t help it. The central paradox of her character was that someone who had so perfect control of her art on stage had so little control over her temperament. No wonder we all lived in fear of becoming the butt of one of their legendary jokes. When playwright Ronald Harwood visited her dressing room shortly after she opened his play InterpreterShe asked him what he was doing. Harwood said he was struggling with a new piece. She replied seamlessly, “Aren’t we all?”

No one can recapture the greatness of her Hedda Gabler under the direction of Ingmar Bergman or her Mrs. Sullen The Beaux’s strategy. Today you can only see them flirting in films The pumpkin eater or majestic in The heyday of Miss Jean Brodie. Watch Jack Clayton’s stylish film Memento mori or, best of all, his adaptation of Brian Moore’s novel The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. Maggie’s performance represents the quintessence of her art: vulnerability, loneliness and alcoholic hope mingle, with the expressions of both passing like clouds across her face. Who else but Magnani and Moreau could be so versatile and so fast?

One weekend a few years ago, I dared to present Maggie with one of her countless awards, this time for the film. As she arrived on stage she whispered in my ear, “Why are you wasting a wonderful Sunday evening giving me an award?” It’s hard to explain why anyone would have seemed touched by such a question. But from Maggie it was warm, funny and sincere.