The writer of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel remembers working with an actor impossible to separate from her withering but warm screen persona

This one hurts. I knew she was ill, but I always believed she was immortal. And, of course, her work is. But it’s hard to accept that all that piss and vinegar didn’t give us just a few more years of the extraordinary pleasure of her company.

That’s if she liked you. If she didn’t – and the list is long – then her company was downright terrifying. You don’t get to be Maggie Smith on screen without being Maggie Smith off screen, and the acerbic wit, the putdowns, the total lack of fucks given were at least as funny and powerful as the lines writers like myself tried to create for her. But for those of us lucky enough to find her approval, her friendship was passionate, her wisdom unmatched, her loyalty fierce as the sun.