Moving from a stately home, surrounded by servants, to a van, surrounded by filth, may seem like an extreme fall from grace. But for Dame Maggie Smith, playing the lady in the van had one big advantage over playing the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey: she didn’t have to wear a corset.
“I feel closer to the lady in the van than the lady with the hat on,” Smith says. “It was easier playing Miss Shepherd because she didn’t mind how she looked, and it was such a relief. For comfort alone, it was nicer.”
Not that the accommodation was all that comfortable.
“Shooting in the van was hideous,” Smith says, “but that really made me think what she lived through. Just a day shooting in the van was a long time. When you think how long Miss Shepherd was in there, it was mind-blowing.”
The real Miss Shepherd, an irascible, eccentric homeless woman, lived in a van in playwright Alan Bennett’s north London driveway for 15 years before her death in 1989. When Bennett wrote a play about the experience, The Lady in the Van, 10 years later, he did so with Smith in mind.
Smith played Miss Shepherd so successfully on stage that when a movie version was mooted, there was only one candidate for the role, says producer Kevin Loader.
“A film made complete sense, providing you could get Maggie, ” Loader says.
Remarkable performance
Fortunately for the filmmakers, Smith was keen to get back on board, and in 2014-15 reprised the role of Miss Shepherd for the movie The Lady in the Van, filmed in and around Bennett’s same old house in Camden Town.
For Loader, the fact that one of Britain’s most esteemed actresses - an octogenarian at that - was willing to take the role was almost as admirable as her performance.
“It’s quite a brave thing for an actress who could now be retreating into the role of national treasure, to come out and play this rather grumpy woman,” Loader says.
“Maggie is brilliant at riding the line between being Miss Shepherd in all her unapologetic grumpiness and breaking our hearts when she peels back a layer or two.”
Director Nicholas Hytner was also blown away by Smith’s performance.
“What she does with The Lady In The Van, scene by scene, over the architecture of the movie, the way she slowly reveals the sense of waste and the sense of regret, it’s something else,” he says. “It’s something completely remarkable.”
Role model
Smith has pursued a career of consistent excellence since making her stage debut as Viola in Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952.
Theatrical highlights have included playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier at the Royal National Theatre in the 1960s, while cinema roles have included the lead in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969 (for which Smith won one of her two Academy Awards), and more recent incarnations such as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series.
As well as multiple acting awards, including Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes, Smith has received a number of honours including Dame Commander of the British Empire and Companion of Honour for achievements in the arts.
Though their lives couldn’t be much different, she finds something admirable about the character of Miss Shepherd.
“She was always fighting her corner,” Smith says. “She isn’t subtle; I think that’s her basic problem… Loud and ghastly though she was, there’s a terrible tragedy there.”
As well as tragedy, there is humour in Smith’s Miss Shepherd.
“Maggie has got a sense of humour, whereas Miss Shepherd didn’t at all,” Bennett says. And for Hytner, the way Smith subtly employs that humour is masterly.
“Maggie has a ferocious wit but Alan is looking for an actor who can suggest how funny they are without acting funny,” Hytner says. “That’s one of the things Maggie does better than anyone else on the planet.”
From stage to screen
Compared with the play, The Lady in the Van film was “much more concentrated, a whole different thing”, Smith says. Transferring a character as big and eccentric as Miss Shepherd from one format to another was a challenge.
“That was what was odd, going from stage to screen,” Smith says. “It was very hard to gauge, because she was so forceful.
“You can’t take it back, which is what you always feel you do on film, reduce things, but there was no way of reducing that woman.”
For Bennett, one thing is clear: he had the right actress in mind when he first wrote the part. “I couldn’t imagine anyone doing Miss Shepherd better,” he says.
The Lady In The Van is out now on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital. Find out more.
