Over her six-decade career, Dame Maggie Smith<\/a> brought corrosive wit and unimpeachable gravitas to everything she did.<\/p>\n But there was so much more to the two-time Oscar winner, who was best known in her later years for her roles in \u201cGosford Park,\u201d the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d franchise and PBS\u2019 hit period drama \u201cDownton Abbey.\u201d The actress, who died last September at age 89<\/a>, was a blistering force of nature in the latter as Dowager Countess Violet Crawley, who presided over the upper-crust Crawley family in early 1900s England.<\/p>\n The character died in 2022 sequel film \u201cDownton Abbey: A New Era\u201d and is memorialized in third movie \u201cDowntown Abbey: The Grand Finale<\/a>\u201d (in theaters Sept. 12).\u00a0Off screen, co-star Michelle Dockery remembers Smith as being \u201cwhip-smart\u201d and \u201cincredibly funny.\u201d<\/p>\n Join our Watch Party! <\/strong>Sign up to receive USA TODAY’s movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n As the Dowager Countess on “Downton Abbey,” Maggie Smith brilliantly mastered the art of the searing put-down.<\/p>\n \u201cWe spent a lot of time laughing together,\u201d Dockery says. She recalls filming \u201cA New Era\u201d in 2021, as anxieties were still high coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cMaggie had that cane as the Dowager<\/a>. If somebody got just a little bit too close, she would pull up the cane so there was distance between her and the other person. But she\u2019d do it in a way that was just so funny: whipping up the cane really quickly so the person couldn\u2019t come any closer. I used to love it when she did that.\u201d<\/p>\n Between takes, Smith took pleasure in playing Bananagrams, a word game similar to Scrabble.<\/p>\n \u201cMaggie was the best at it,\u201d Dockery says. \u201cNot only did you have to up your game when it came to acting around Maggie, but playing games together as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n