Maggie Smith receives Royalty Membership by Queen Elizabeth II

The Downtown Abbey’s actress Maggie Smith who plays Countess of Grantham was awarded the membership of Order of the Companions of Honor.

Maggie Smith has been known for an array of roles which ranges back to 1950s. She was born in Ilford, Essex, and raised in Oxford. She had appeared in various films and dramas. She has performed at the Royal Theatre Company and Broadway. Her most famous movies include A Private Function, Death on The Nile and A Room with a View. 

She received her first Oscar nomination for her role in the 1965 adaption of Othello. She won her first award The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Later on she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1978 for California Suite. 

One of the most famous characters of Maggie is Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter franchise. She is one of the actors that have appeared in all the eight movies. She is currently known for her role in the period drama on BBC, the Downtown Abbey in which she plays the matriarchal Countess of Grantham. 

Maggie Smith was made a dame in 1990. She continued to made great movies after that and have appeared in countless films before she was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

She shot the Half Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows while she was being treated for the disease and her roles were not affected in any way and all the actors paid tribute to her courage and dedication. 

The actress herself was pretty shaken up by her illness and was scared to return to acting. The treatment worked and she was finally in remission when she assumed her role in the Downtown Abbey and the drama has since then been nothing but an amazing hit. It recently received various Emmy nominations and has won various Bafta awards.

No honor could be greater than the one given to the Dame by the Queen of England herself. Queen Elizabeth has been touring the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London. She conducted a series of investitures over the fortnight since returning from Balmoral. 

In those investitures, Dame Maggie Smith was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. She would join the membership with honored people like Stephen Hawking and artist David Hockney. 

The other recipient at the ceremony was Conservative MP Sir Bill Cash who had received his knighthood for political services to United Kingdom and England. Where Dame Maggie Smith refused to speak to the press, Sir Cash took the chance to highlight the importance of revival of true governance in England. 

Sir Cash has had a very active political career which includes working with Tory PM John Major while they played the role of backbench rebels against the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, and has been chairman of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee since 2010. 

He has also played a vital role in Gender Equality in International Development Bill which was passed as a law earlier this year. He said that he works for England and his loyalties are truly with the Queen of England.

Source: DailyMail