Director Richard Eyre, who worked with Smith on the TV production Suddenly, Last Summer, praised her intelligence. “She is the smartest actress I’ve ever worked with. You have to wake up very early to outwit Maggie Smith.”

Smith’s role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, where she portrayed a dangerously charismatic schoolteacher in Edinburgh, earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA.
She later won another Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for California Suite in 1978. Additionally, she received Golden Globes for California Suite and A Room with a View, and BAFTA awards for her performances in A Private Function (1984), A Room with a View (1986), and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1988).

Smith also earned multiple Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress in films like Othello, Travels with My Aunt, A Room with a View, and Gosford Park. She won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress in Tea with Mussolini. On stage, she took home a Tony Award in 1990 for her role in Lettice and Lovage.