Maggie Smith says acting on ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘Harry Potter’ wasn’t “satisfying”

When you’re 84, you don’t have to mince words.

Maggie Smith, or to give her full title, Dame Maggie Smith, is 84 years of age and still going strong.

More to the point, when you’re at that age, you don’t necessarily have to start softening your words or mincing them to make others feel better. Why? Because you’re 84, you’ve forgotten more than most people know, and you most likely get to a stage where you don’t really care anymore.

For Dame Maggie Smith, it seems, she’s done pretending that ‘Downton Abbey’ or the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise was anything other than money in the bank. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Smith laid it all out. “I am deeply grateful for the work in Potter and indeed Downton but it wasn’t what you’d call satisfying. I didn’t really feel I was acting in those things,” she explained.

In fact, Dame Maggie Smith also claimed that she and her co-star in the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise, the sadly-departed Alan Rickman, used to complain that their work consisted merely of reaction shots.

To be fair, Alan Rickman and Dame Maggie Smith were way better actors than the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise deserved, so the fact they even turned up to work in the first place deserves credit.

With an admission like this, though, you’d have to wonder if she’s going to be coming back for that threatened ‘Downton Abbey’ sequel.