20 Fabulous Vintage Photos Of A Young Maggie Smith

She’s been nominated for six Oscars and won two, but Dame Maggie Smith – Britain’s grand dame of period dramas – will henceforth be best known as a Loewe girl, after the 88-year-old was photographed by Juergen Teller for the brand’s spring/summer 2024 campaign. “So proud,” said designer Jonathan Anderson, as he shared the pictures of a smiling Smith clutching Loewe’s Puzzle Fold tote, unveiling perhaps the most inspired bit of age positive fashion casting since Céline put the late Joan Didion in a plain black jumper. (Those images, you’ll remember, were also captured by Teller.)

Long before she was a fashion girl, and before she was sweeping up at awards season, Maggie Smith was a sylph-like British talent carving out a stellar reputation on the West End stage. The Essex-born actor kicked off her career playing Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse, where she studied her craft. It was the beginning of a love affair with the Bard that has endured over the decades: she played Desdemona in Othello (and earned her first Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1965 film adaptation); and starred as Queen Elizabeth, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra on stage in the late ’70s.