NOTHING LIKE A DAME

‘Downton Abbey’ Star Left Eye-Watering Sum to Her Kids

Both are now working actors.

Downton Abbey and Harry Potter legend Dame Maggie Smith left her kids a fortune. The 89-year-old died in a hospital in London, England, in 2024, but only now have new probate records been released, revealing what she left behind for her two actor sons. They inherited a net estate equivalent to $21,716,731, which includes The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie star’s five-bedroom West Sussex farmhouse, Douglas Lake Farm, the London Standard reports. The two-time Oscar winner had both her sons, Christopher Stephens and Toby Stephens, with her first husband, Robert Stephens, with whom she divorced in 1975. Both are working actors, although Christopher goes by the stage name Chris Larkin. A four-time Emmy and five-time BAFTA winner, she married Beverley Cross in 1975, a playwright with whom she remained married until his death in 1998. Royalties from Cross’s work, as well as copyrights and unpublished work that she inherited upon his death, are to be split between her two sons and Cross’s kids, Philippa Maughan and Shaun Cross.