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They had not been seen together in the museum galleries for quite a while. Monet’s “Women with Umbrellas” are once again side by side in the Impressionist gallery.

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Beverley Cross and Maggie Smith get married (1975)

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EXCLUSIVE: We go behind the scenes with Judi Dench, Richard Gere, Maggie Smith, Celia Imrie, Dev Patel and Bill Nighy as they film The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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Maggie Smith, photographed by Roy Jones.

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A 21 year old Maggie Smith (centre), pictured with some of her fellow cast members from New Faces of 1956.

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"Both Smith and Dench are blunt, down-to-earth, no-nonsense characters, not given to prevarication. Great actresses do not always co-exist in perfect harmony. But ”Mags’’ and ”Jude’’ have always been the greatest of friends. They have also worked together, memorably and felicitously, without stealing each other’s light or thunder, adding their lustre to a number of remarkable films." - The Telegraph

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Maggie Smith attends the Sun Military Awards - 10th December, 2014

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Maggie Smith - one jacket, more then 30+ years in between, and still looking utterly gorgeous!

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Happy Birthday, Dame Maggie Smith (28th December, 1934)

Maggie Smith is magnificent, pure and simple. She’s a monolith. Multitudes of complicated women teem within her, and she morphs from one to the next in the course of her many roles, never repeating herself, but somehow always remaining indisputably Maggie Smith.

She comes equipped. First the eyes: huge, potentially barmy and never-endingly expressive. They exude aristocratic malevolence in Gosford Park. In The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne, they flicker and lose a little more light with every fragment of her dignity subtracted by heartbreak or the bottle. In The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie they are arrogant and commanding, yet wounded in their depths. As the preening, socially ambitious wife of meek Michael Palin in A Private Function, she aims them like lasers on every social faux-pas the poor man commits.

Then the voice: it has a steely, nasal edge to it that best serves her harder characters, or all her characters’ harder moods, but its other pole is a singerly softness that appears in moments of romance or, more often, disillusion. However she uses it, her mastery of vocal control is without peer; she can roll a word around the mouth until you hear every pealing syllable of it, a throwback to the West End’s postwar, pre-Wesker commitment to exquisite diction.

And the brain. Command Central. This is the cleverest, wittiest actress alive, the fastest mind in the room. No wonder Alan Bennett can’t get enough of her; she delves into every last nuance in his characters’ words and lives. And although Bennett, an old friend, knows how to play her like a trumpet, she can do all this for any writer, it seems.

She stands five feet five. She acts six foot four. Where’s her statue?

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Maggie Smith as the Girl - The Girl on the Beach (1959)

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The baker of Maggie’s birthday cake posted a picture of it online this afternoon.

Betty Scrumptious

Earlier this month I was thrilled to be asked, by one of her sons, to make Dame Maggie Smith’s 80th birthday cake. The brief was for a very simple, stylish cake incorporating a fabulous caricature drawn in 1979 by Hirschfield. I was thrilled to receive this feedback….”The cake was a HUGE success. You surpassed yourself and my Mum loved it. Also it tasted absolutely scrummy!!! (x)

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Your mom’s show “Downton Abbey” is a hit here. Is she a “Black Sails” fan? Over here, it’s only been shown on Amazon Prime and iTunes. My mom just turned 80. The idea of her dealing with digital downloads is like her flying to the moon. We bought her the DVDs for Christmas. She’s going to watch it. I think she’ll be slightly baffled by it. It’s so visceral and violent – it might not be her cup of tea. But quite frankly, her show isn’t my cup of tea. - Toby Stephens (x)