I first met Maggie through my husband, Robert Fox, the film and theatre producer. He’d first met her in 1974, when he was 22 and she was starring in Snap, a comedy about venereal disease. His task was to drive her to and from the theatre and generally hold her hand, which he remembers as enthralling and terrifying.
But they hit it off: she trusted his taste and he went on to produce her in 10 plays over 22 years, including Lettice and Lovage and The Importance of Being Earnest. That was a huge hit back in 1993 – the year I met Robert – but Maggie famously loathed everything about it, from Nicholas Hytner’s direction to Bob Crowley’s sets. When asked by the Mail’s showbiz correspondent whether she’d take the show to Broadway, she responded: “Broadway? I wouldn’t take this to Woking!”
She reserved special loathing for her co-star, Richard E Grant, to whom she gave the moniker Richard E Cant. (She was also partial to calling him Reg, after his initials.) Who can say why she took against him, for she could turn on a pin. To say she could be withering would be an understatement. But to Robert, Maggie was like family: a friend and near-neighbour of his parents (Robert’s father was a renowned actors’ agent, his mother almost as outspoken as she was).
Maggie and I got on well and, happily, I was never on the receiving end of her spikiness. In 2002, we worked together when I produced a “behind the scenes at the Oscars” photoshoot for British Vogue, for which I was then editor-at-large. I’d had the idea to shoot Maggie and her best friend, Judi Dench, playing Travel Scrabble (Maggie always took her travel version wherever she went) while having manicures and pedicures on the roof of the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles.
Both dames were to wear floaty kaftans by Tom Ford, designed for Yves Saint Laurent. It all seemed a marvellous plan until the morning of the photoshoot when Maggie arrived in Judi’s suite. Both women were up for awards – Maggie for Gosford Park, Judi for Iris. Maggie was not pleased to find Judi ensconced in an enormous suite, while she had been put in “a matchbox next to an elevator shaft”. “My eyes feel scratchy,” she drawled in that voice, so reminiscent of her great friend Kenneth Williams. “I don’t think I can do the picture.”
Barely contained panic broke out in the Vogue team. I suggested we look at the clothes: bad idea. “What is this tat?” she barked as she fingered the leopard-print silk chiffon. The stylist fled down the corridor, traumatised. My next idea was better received: “Let’s open some champagne!” Soon she began to loosen up and tell stories. “When I was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” she said, “I arrived at my hotel room to find a bottle of warm fizzy wine and two plastic glasses. When I got back after winning, I was amused to see a huge bottle of champagne in a silver bucket instead.”
Then Judi whispered to me: “Try getting the jewels over right now, that might do the trick.” Soon the suite was filled with burly security guards in black suits bearing trays of diamonds from Harry Winston. “You go first, Mags,” said Judi. She knew how to handle her friend. In the end, Maggie liked the pictures so much she asked if we could have them made into postcards for her.
For that ceremony, I offered to liaise with fashion houses to find something for Maggie to wear. Yet they all said no. It was a shocking response. “She’s a bit old for us,” they would reply (at this point, she was 67). “Not really our demographic.” Finally, after much persuasion, Armani deigned to allow her to borrow some black trousers and a top from their shelves. Thank goodness times have changed. At 88, Maggie became the face of Loewe for its spring/summer 2024 campaign. Shot by Juergen Teller, the lines on her face and bony fingers went un-retouched. Her age something to celebrate.
On the night itself, I suggested Maggie don a pair of Spanx to achieve a streamlined silhouette. She had never heard of them but I told her I wore them all the time and bought her some as a gift. She was horrified: “They look like they’d fit a Barbie doll!” I assured her that with enough huffing and puffing, she’d get them on and be comfortable – and so she did.
Maggie didn’t win the Oscar that night. After the ceremony, we headed to the Vanity Fair party but schmoozing with stars was not her thing. She would have preferred to be at home with a good book. We clung to each other when, in the middle of the festivities, there was a power cut and we were thrown into total darkness for 10 minutes. “Imagine if when the lights came up everyone’s jewels had been robbed,” she chuckled. The next morning, she called me to say that when she removed the Spanx, she looked like “a peeled onion”.
In 2003, Maggie came to the glitzy opening night party for Sam Mendes’s version of Gypsy, which Robert was producing in New York. A gaggle of young actors, about seven years old, were in attendance: all in puffy dresses, their hair tonged and piled on top of their heads like profiteroles covered in glitter. They were shoved by various parents towards Maggie – by now famous for her role in Harry Potter. She agreed to some photos, despite looking horrified. As she gazed down on children who’d been made up like beauty pageant contestants, she shuddered, quietly muttering with her immaculate comic timing: “It’s not right.”
But my favourite memories of Maggie are of her just sitting in our kitchen telling stories. When she’d come to our house for Sunday lunch, no one would leave the table. You didn’t want to miss a word: it was living history, something you knew you should savour. I remember someone saying that Vanessa Redgrave had sprained her elbow. “How?” asked one of the other guests. “Acting,” drawled Maggie, those eyes narrowing. Everyone collapsed. Her comic timing was flawless. One Sunday, a fellow guest was the esteemed European director Ivo van Hove, who Maggie immediately re-named “Ivo van Hove near Brighton”.
In 1998, her beloved husband, the playwright Beverley Cross, died. Robert and I went to his funeral and then back to Maggie’s house in Chelsea. Somehow, I found myself in a room alone with her. We weren’t yet close, but I just sat with her, holding her hand, in silence. She loved him so much and felt so vulnerable.
Six years later, my mother died. Robert was in Sydney with Maggie producing a production of Talking Heads. He flew home for one day to come to my mother’s funeral and then the next morning we went back to Australia together. Once I was there, it was Maggie who held my hand.
The last time she called Robert was from a care home, where she was recuperating from an operation. Maggie joked about how being there reminded her of his mother’s own terrible behaviour when she was in a similar place. I shall never forget the look of love on Robert’s face as they spoke.
I shall miss Maggie very much, who her beloved sons, Toby and Chris, and their families, shared so generously with the world. To know her was to feel the most enormous sense of privilege, to have been in the orbit of someone so talented, complex and unique. I shall never meet another person like her. We are all much poorer for her loss.
