Multi-awarded actress Maggie Smith was halfway through her cancer treatment when she made Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, starring as Professor Minerva McGonagall.
“I was hairless. I had no problem getting the wig on. I was like a boiled egg,” she said.
The chemotherapy was, she said, “something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself”. “You feel horribly sick. I was holding on to railings, thinking ‘I can’t do this’,” she said.
But she insisted she will “stagger through” the final Harry Potter film, The Deathly Hallows. Let’s just pause and ponder on how awesome this woman is, a true Gryffindor.