Downton Abbey‘s Dowager Countess of Grantham is 80 years old. That is to say, Maggie Smith, the great actress and force of nature who plays her is 80. (The Dowager Countess’s age is properly unknown.) Smith set Downton fans on edge when she said recently that the upcoming season would be her last–even if Downton Abbey persists into a seventh season.
But then who shall issue the verbal daggers?!! Smith points out that the show is moving fast, traversing decades. “We’re into the late 1920s,” she says of the Downton Abbey action. Her character, she imagines, “must be 110 by now.” But Smith’s representatives say “she’ll be with the show for as long as the show runs.” That’s very confident representation.
