Maggie Smith's beloved characters have spanned generations.

The English actor worked in film, theatre and television from the early fifties to right up until last year.

She was one of the few actresses to win the Triple Crown of Acting — an Oscar, Emmy and Tony in acting categories.

She won two Oscars, four Emmys and a Tony Award as well as five BAFTAs and five Screen Actors Guild awards.

The diversity and longevity of her career in film, television and theatre is a rare feat.

From a witch to a dowager countess, Smith embraced comedic, dramatic and eccentric roles.

As fans mourn the late actor, many are revisiting their favourite films or shows featuring the dame.

Let's take a look back at some of her best and most well-known roles.

Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films

Perhaps Maggie Smith's most iconic role of the 21st century is as Professor Minerva McGonagall in all eight Harry Potter films.

Professor McGonagall, the Head of Gryffindor House, is famous for her witches' hat and stern manner with the young witches and wizards at Hogwarts.

Her famous lines included: "Why is it, when something happens, it is always with you three?" and "I will not have you in the course of a single evening … besmirching that name by behaving like a babbling, bumbling band of baboons!"

Asked why she took the role, she quipped: "Harry Potter is my pension."

Co-star Daniel Radcliffe released a statement reading, in part: "I will always consider myself amazingly lucky to have been able to work with her … the word legend is overused but if it applies to anyone in our industry then it applies to her."

Bonnie Wright, who played Ginny Weasley, wrote on Instagram: "Our dearly loved and revered head of Gryffindor house, you will be so missed by the Harry Potter community."

In an interview with Graham Norton, she said she had a whole new fanbase after Harry Potter was released.

For the first time, she would get stopped in the street by "little people" who only knew her for her role in Harry Potter.

"It was a whole different lot of people," she said.

Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey

From 2010 to 2015, Smith played the matriarch of the Crawley family in popular BBC drama Downton Abbey.

The dowager countess was a scene-stealer who was known for her purse-lipped lines and malicious cracks offering audiences some light relief in more tense and dramatic points in the story.

She earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role.

In an interview about her role in Downton Abbey, she said: "What I think is so brilliant is this is not an adaption of something. To have these original ideas is stunning."

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie

For her title role as a teacher at a girls' school in Edinburgh, Maggie Smith won her first Oscar in 1969 for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The film follows Jean Brodie, a teacher with a tendency to stray from the school's curriculum who finds herself in trouble for her unorthodox teaching methods and outlook on life.

Despite the praise and accolades for Smith's performance, the film itself was a box office disappointment, grossing $US3 million on a $US2.76 million budget.

Her most famous line from the film is: "Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life."

California Suite

Maggie Smith won her second Oscar, this time for best supporting actress, for her role as Diana Barrie in the 1978 film California Suite.

The comedy anthology film focuses on the dilemmas of guests staying in a suite in a luxury hotel.

Ironically, Maggie Smith plays a British Actress who is in town for the Oscars, hoping a nomination will revive her dwindling career.

Smith's marital banter with her on-screen husband, played by Michael Caine, was praised by reviewers as stealing the show.

The critics' consensus on film review website Rotten Tomatoes says that Maggie Smith's "acidic turn is the stand-out in this stacked ensemble".

"I would very much like Michael Caine to be here because believe you me he was the most supporting actor out there and the award should go right down the middle," she said in her Oscars acceptance speech.

Sister Act

Before she donned her Hogwarts robe, Smith put on a nun's habit and played Reverend Mother in the 1992 comedy musical Sister Act.

Alongside star Whoopi Goldberg, she returned for sequel Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit in 1993.

"Maggie Smith was a great woman and a brilliant actress," Goldberg wrote via Instagram, sharing a photo of the pair dressed as nuns.

"I still can't believe I was lucky enough to work with the 'one-of-a-kind'.

"My heartfelt condolences go out to the family."

Travels with my Aunt

Maggie Smith's third Oscar nomination, and second for Best Actress, came in an adaptation of Graham Greene's story Travels with my Aunt in 1972.

The story follows August Bertram, an eccentric dowager who recruits who she claims is her bank manager nephew to accompany her on a multi-country trip that involves ransom and other nefarious activities.

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Leading a star-studded ensemble cast, Smith plays retired housekeeper Muriel Donelly, who moves to India for a hip replacement in 2011 film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Joined by Judie Dench, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton and Dev Patel, Smith delivers perfect comedic timing in her role as a bitter (and sometimes bigoted) woman who learns to embrace her situation and new life in India toward the end of the film.

With her trademark delivery of one-liners, she is the perfect addition to a sweet story full of veteran British actors.

On her role in the sequel in 2015, she spoke about working with the same group of actors again.

"The weirdest thing is to get this group of actors together again three years later, that's an extraordinary thing because everyone's very dispersed and doing different things, so it's a very extraordinary thing."

Lady in a Van

In 2015 film The Lady in Van, Smith plays Miss Shepherd, a cantankerous elderly lady who lives in an old van and forms an unlikely friendship with a man whose driveway she is parked in.

It was written by Alan Bennett and loosely tells the true story of his interactions with Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van on his driveway in north London for 15 years.

The film was adapted from a play in 2000 in which Smith also played the lead role.

Smith said filming was difficult because she spent most of her time confined to a van.

The film was given 89 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and garnered mainly favourable reviews that praised Smith's acting.

While promoting the film at a press junket at the BFI London Film Festival, she said she was "very lucky" to play the part.

"It is tough at this age and I can't say it's easy," she said on playing the role at 80 years old.

She said she drew energy from director Nicholas Hytner.

Othello

One of Dame Maggie's most iconic early roles was as Desdemona in the film adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello.

Sir Laurence Olivier, who was playing the title role, offered her the part at the National Theatre in 1963. She then reprised it two years later when it was made into a film.

She was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress.

Years later, Dame Maggie told the Guardian she did the role "with great discomfort and was terrified all the time".

The film is also known for being controversial as Olivier played Othello in blackface, a choice he defended in his 1995 memoir, Confessions of an Actor.

In a documentary in 2018 called Tea with Dames, Smith recalled her shock at seeing Olivier in his makeup for the first time and revealed she regularly butted heads with the actor.

The First Wives Club 

In The First Wives Club, Smith puts on an American accent and portrays Gunilla Garson Goldberg, a wealthy New York City socialite who helps the First Wives Club with their schemes. 

The 1996 cult comedy stars Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler as divorced "first wives" who enact revenge on their ex-husbands and their new wives.

With her trademark sass, she embodied the character like no-one else could, enabling the trio because she was once a first wife as well as a "second, third and fourth wife".

Upon hearing the news of Smith's death, co-star Bronson Pinchot told People Magazine the story of when he first met the actor.

"I started to tell her that her performance as Desdemona in Othello had moved me so much I had to be literally carried out of the movie theatre," he explained.

In response, he said, she picked up her purse and whacked him with it before saying: "We'll have none of that."

Interview moments

This is not a role but Maggie Smith's interview one-liners are definitely worth mentioning.

Smith's 2018 documentary Tea with the Dames sees her sitting down to tea with fellow iconic actresses Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright.

Their banter and self-deprecating humour shows her humility despite her iconic career and damehood for services to drama.

On becoming a dame, Smith said: "I was just so thrilled my father was alive, it's the people who've helped who got you where you are, it's not really you."

She was also a couch favourite on the Graham Norton Show, giving fans moments like this.