Long live the Dowager Countess! After two Emmy awards and a Golden Globe for her part as Violet Crawley, Maggie Smith has plans to leave Downton Abbey.
The celebrated actress, 80, said in a new interview with the Sunday Times that she believes the sixth season of the acclaimed PBS show will be her last.
“They say this is the last one,” Smith said of the upcoming sixth season of Downton Abbey, which is filming this year. “I can’t see how it could go on.”
“I mean, I certainly can’t keep going,” the Harry Potter star added. “To my knowledge, I must be 110 by now. We’re into the late 1920s.”
Smith has played her regal, acerbic character of Dowager Countess of Grantham Violet Crawley since Downton Abbey‘s first season in 2010. The Emmy-winning show’s fifth season finale aired on Sunday, March 1.
As she filmed the British drama, Smith filled out her busy schedule with other talked-about projects. She was recently featured in the movies Quartet and My Old Lady, and will appear this month in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
