Born Margaret Natalie Smith on December 28, 1934, in Ilford, a suburb of East London, Maggie once summed up her life in a simple sentence: “I went to school, I wanted to act, I started acting, and I’m still acting.”

Her father was posted to Oxford for wartime duty in 1939, where Smith began studying theater at the Oxford Playhouse School. This led to her being involved in numerous university productions around Oxford.
“I did so many things there… If you were quick and smart enough, you could be involved in different productions happening almost every week,” she said in a BBC interview.

Smith chose “Maggie” as her stage name to avoid confusion with another actress named Margaret Smith, who was also active in theater at the time. Laurence Olivier spotted her talent and invited her to join the original National Theatre company, casting her as Desdemona in the 1965 film adaptation of Othello.

Smith cited two directors, Ingmar Bergman and William Gaskill, as major influences on her work at the National Theatre.