Actress Maggie Smith was born on December 28, 1934, in Essex, England. She began her acting career at the Oxford Playhouse in the 1950s and made her film debut in 1956. Since then, she has steadily built her acting career, starring as Jean Brodie in "The 1960s." Her performance as a teacher torn between her strict ideals as a teacher and her own love life won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1978 for "California Suite," and has been nominated for an Academy Award six times to date. In recent years, she has become well-known in Japan for her role as teacher McGonagall in the "Harry Potter" series. In recognition of these achievements, she was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (third highest honor) in 1970 and the title of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (second highest honor) in 1990. In his personal life, he married actor Robert Stephens in 1967 and had two children, but divorced him in 1975. He then remarried playwright Beverly Cross, but she died in 1998.