Two-time Oscar winner Maggie Smith, the celebrated stage actress who starred in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and burnished her long-shining star by playing the scene-stealing dowager countess of "Downton Abbey" and the exacting Professor McGonagall in the "Harry Potter" franchise, has died. She was 89.

The respected English dame "passed away peacefully" early Friday in a London hospital, her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement to The Times.

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