Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, of Downton Abbey

How do we love thee, Dame Maggie Smith? Let us count the quips. Deliciously offering up barb after barb (“Of course it would happen to a foreigner. No Englishman would dream of dying in someone else’s house.”), Maggie Smith recently took home an Emmy for her work on Downton Abbey. (In Violet, Smith is awesomely reprising her role as the haughty Constance Trentham from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes’ Gosford Park.) A veteran of stage and TV, Smith has also shouldered iconic film roles in Sister Act and the Harry Potter series.