LAST week actress Maggie Smith died at the age of 89. The headlines were full of pictures of her in her most notable roles from the 21st century, but one former journalist preferred to remember her at the start of her career, when they met.
“I kept remembering the picture I took of her,” former journalist William Sinclair recalls. “Not a wrinkle on her face."
Sinclair met Smith almost 70 years ago, right near the start of her acting career.
The English actress had travelled to Edinburgh with the Oxford Theatre Group in a production of WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood’s Dog Beneath the Skin.
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It was around 1956 or 1957, Sinclair can’t remember the exact date, and the group was in the Scottish capital for the Fringe.
The 89-year-old was working for the Evening Dispatch, the forerunner of the Evening News as The Scotsman’s evening paper, and was tasked to cover the show.
Sinclair was determined not to follow the trend of shooting performers only onstage or at an interview.
He decided that he would chat to Smith who was getting ready and doing her makeup before the show started.
“You make a couple of jokes, and she makes a couple of jokes, and then, you know you're going to be alright,” said Sinclair.
The pair bonded instantly as they were the same age. “Her birthday was in December, and my birthday was in the next April.
“She was older than me, as she kept pointing out,” he said with a chuckle.
The former journalist remembers Smith fondly as someone who was charming and funny.
“She wasn’t pompous in any kind of way,” Sinclair said.
“A truly lovely lassie, in all senses of the word, and even at that early stage a wonderful career was assured.”
Smith asked Sinclair about Edinburgh. As the production was held in a venue on the Royal Mile, the actress was keen to learn more about the city.
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“I was working pretty much around the clock, so we didn't have a lot of time, but we got on very well,” Sinclair said.
He then snapped a quick picture of Smith for his write-up of the show before the pair parted ways.
It was an encounter which has stuck with Sinclair almost seven decades later and he was thankful he got the chance to meet her.
Smith went on to have a successful career in acting and won an Oscar for the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
She is also fondly remembered for her role as the Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter franchise.
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