Maggie’ Smith’s two husbands and their complicated love stories

Maggie Smith, a two-time Oscar-winning actor who also appeared in “Downton Abbey” and the “Harry Potter” film series, has died at the age of 89.

Smith, a star of the big and small screen, was also married twice, first to actor Robert Stephens and then to playwright Beverley Cross. Read on to find out more about her husbands.

Robert Stephens

Smith and Stephens were married on June 19, 1967. They had two children together, sons Chris and Toby.

Smith and Stephens also combined work and pleasure, starring in 1969’s “The First Miss Jean Brodie,” which won Smith her first Oscar for best actress. They appeared together again in 1972 in “Travels with My Aunt,” which also earned Smith an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

The marriage broke down due to Stephens’ mental health problems and infidelity. In 1970 he tried to commit suicide.

“And then it was just hopeless,” she told The Guardian in 2004. “We had two little boys. He didn’t understand. I certainly didn’t understand. It got worse, and then it got worse and worse. In the end it destroyed everyone. And he had so many affairs.

Still, Smith appreciated the family they had built.

“I have two wonderful sons and he is the reason for this,” she told The Guardian.

The couple’s divorce was finalized in 1975. Stephens died in 1995 at the age of 64.

Beverley’s Cross

Cross and Smith, who had known each other since the 1950s when she worked in the student revue at Oxford, married in 1975 and remained married until his death in 1998 at the age of 66.

According to his obituary in the New York Times, Cross first married another Oxford woman, Elizabeth Clunies-Ross, but never strayed too far from Smith, casting her in his second play, “Strip the Willow” in 1960.

Cross eventually divorced. According to his obituary, Smith and Cross then began a relationship, but fate intervened again.

Cross suggested Smith join the British National Theater at the Old Vic, where she then met her first husband, Stephens. “Mr. Cross was filled with, as he later said, a murderous hatred of Mr. Stephens,” the New York Times obituary read.

Smith stated that her relationship with Stephens could be traced back to Cross, telling the Guardian that the encounter with Stephens “was entirely Bev’s fault. Because he talked me into going to the National Theater after I already said no.

Cross married a second time, this time to Gayden Collins, but divorced after Smith and Stephens split, setting the stage for them to tie the knot.

They had no children, although Cross had children from previous marriages.

Smith and Cross missed each other for years before they finally met, a twist of fate she clearly understood.

“I am incredibly lucky,” she is quoted as saying in Cross’s obituary in The New York Times. “When you meet again the person you should marry, it works like a script. This kind of happiness is too good to be true.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com