In a career of remarkable versatility, Maggie Smith revealed that theatricality is a way of life

There is hardly another actor who could do more with syllables than Maggie Smith. Language was an all-purpose support for them.

Her characters would rain down on consonants as if they were landing a plane in the middle of an engine failure, or drag out vowels, defying several laws of physics. Silence was a deadly weapon in their hands. Their pauses could swallow up the conversations around them. Stronger than any joke was the space she left for anticipation, not just of what she was about to say, but of what she was about to say How she could say it.

Dame Maggie, who died in London on Friday aged 89, was trained as a repertory stage actress in an English system rooted in Shakespeare and was prepared for versatility. Her astonishing range, underpinned by a stage and film career that spanned generations, genres and cultural levels, had one common denominator: a reverence for the written word. Her gifts—and they were rightly legendary—transformed the dialogue on the page into verbal music.

If she preferred comedy to tragedy, it was because she understood that in life there was no separation between the two. Grief and loss could not eliminate the absurdity of human behavior. She enjoyed the indomitability of our quirks and whims and their ability to survive even a massive catastrophe. Each of us will eventually be wiped out, but our unique textures are unrepeatable. She honored these traces, even if she ironically highlighted their untenable triviality.

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I have only seen Smith on stage in New York once, the last time she was on Broadway, in Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Love in 1990. I was a student at the time and still feel the excitement surrounding the production . Audiences flocked to the Ethel Barrymore Theater to see a comic virtuoso in battle. Watching Smith throw verbal grenades with her co-star Margaret Tyzack was like watching Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova trade forehands at Wimbledon.

The piece, about an imaginative tour guide through a dull and stately English country house who comes into conflict with a no-nonsense civil servant on the historic estate, was almost irrelevant. What remains is the croaking byplay, the rising desperation, the tango of opposing temperaments fleetingly finding common ground. Shaffer delivered just enough to unlock the impressive arsenals of two sharp veterans.

Smith won an Oscar for her starring role in 1969's “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” about a larger-than-life teacher at an Edinburgh girls' school who seeks to free the minds of her students with romantic ideas that prove dangerous not fascist. Based on Muriel Sparks' indelible novel, the film was a perfect vehicle for Smith's theatrical charm and seductive sorcery.

She was at her best on screen when she could bring the stage. Her first Oscar nomination was for playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier's Othello, and her subsequent nominations have all been for characters whose theatricality was a mode of existence. She won a second Oscar for her great supporting role in Herbert Ross' 1978 film “California Suite,” in which she played an egotistical British actress who has come to Los Angeles with her husband to attend the Oscars. while her marriage falls apart. Smith prepares a full meal from Neil Simon's wild sketch.

Smith gained international fame through her work in “Downton Abbey” and the “Harry Potter” films, a fame she treated like a suspicious visitor. The role of a caustic widow or master teacher of witchcraft was a given for her, but what excited her about acting was the transformative freedom. There are tons in an actress, and Smith knew there were legions within her.

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It was fun to play aristocrats with autocratic mannerisms, but characters from the general rung could be just as commanding. She shined on stage and screen in Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van, playing a quirky squatter with an overbearing sense of entitlement. Another Bennett work, “Bed Among the Lentils,” part of his “Talking Heads” monologue series filmed for BBC Television, gave Smith the opportunity to play a lonely vicar's wife whose drinking problem becomes increasingly apparent and whose desires for something else are easily contained .

The balance between pathos and idiosyncratic humor in portraying women who reach the limits of their possibilities – which she achieved perfectly in the 1987 film “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” – has always been her strength. She realized that there is nothing more dramatic than human contradictions, the clash and confusion of self-image and public perception.

Consider the haughtiness of her unforgettable widow in “Gosford Park” against the backdrop of the character’s financial plight. Satire stands out best when immersed in embarrassing realities.

Smith had the Geraldine Page quality of bringing the street to the screen or stage, as if someone living an everyday life had snuck in through the casting back door. That these were two of the most technically accomplished actors of modern times is a testament to their genius. Smith, a product of the classical British tradition, was guided by the lightning-quick eloquence of Shakespeare. Her timing was unmatched, but what made it so was the truth she revealed in the gap that occurs before thoughts and feelings finally escape into words.

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.