Maggie Smith’s 2 Children: All About Her Sons Chris and Toby

Dame Maggie Smith, who died on Sept. 27, 2024, was beloved across generations, especially for her roles as Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter franchise and Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey.

But long before becoming a household name, Smith was mom to her two sons: Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens. The actress shared her two children with ex-husband Robert Stephens.

Today, the brothers are both actors. Chris, who chose to shed his famous last name professionally, has made a name for himself as Richard Brown on Outlander, while Toby is known for his role as John Robinson on the Netflix series Lost In Space.

Both Chris and Toby have performed on stage as well, though Toby has insisted that neither of his parents pushed the vocation on them. In fact, it was the opposite.

“My parents didn’t particularly encourage me initially. They knew how hard the profession is: just because they’d been successful didn’t mean I would,” he told The Guardian in 2013. “They said, ‘You’re on your own.’ I’m really grateful: It made me get out there and hone my taste.”

Toby and Chris were “devastated” by the death of their mother in September 2024. They confirmed the sad news in a statement and revealed that Smith died “peacefully in [the] hospital.”

Here is everything to know about the late Maggie Smith’s two children.

Chris Larkin, 57

Smith and Stephens’ first son, Christopher Larkin Stephens, was born on June 19, 1967.

Like his parents and his younger brother, Chris is also an actor. As he told The Times in 2013, he chose to drop “Stephens” from his stage name to avoid the connection to his famous father — and he wasn’t planning on changing it back. “There are lots of people whose parents are in the business who might be able to say, ‘Yes, I got my big break because of who my parents are.’ Great. The challenge is to sustain it,” he said. “And if you’re not good, you’ll be found out. The job is fairly brutal like that.”

Despite the effort to make his career his own, Chris has been open about the impact both of his parents have had on him as an actor. While speaking to Broadway.com during the run of the play Pack of Lies at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, he recalled his earliest memory of his mother as an actor. “I remember going with my brother to see mum play the title role in Peter Pan at the Coliseum, with Dave Allen as Captain Hook,” he said. “That was during the so-called ‘winter of discontent’ in the early 1970s and I remember mum saying it was freezing because there were power cuts and they had turned off all the heating.”

Chris also told the outlet that he wasn’t always sure he wanted to act. “I got into acting comparatively late, funnily enough, and only enrolled at LAMDA when I was 22 or 23,” he said. “Toby is younger than I am but was the year ahead of me at drama school and I remember mum being rather arch and saying to me, ‘Oh, I rather thought you might give acting a go.'” He graduated from the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art in 1992.

The British actor joined the cast of Outlander in season 5. He lives in London with his wife, Suki, and their children.

Toby Stephens, 55

Smith and Stephens welcomed their second son, Toby Stephens, on April 21, 1969.

Despite his mother’s illustrious career, Toby has made it clear that he didn’t come from an especially wealthy background — but his accent has signaled to many British casting directors that he did.

“I remember my parents being really on me about speaking in a certain way when I was young, I think because they came from a class that aspired to talk like that,” he told the Radio Times in 2015, per The Telegraph. He also insisted that his school — Seaford College — was “fairly second rate — it wasn’t Eton.”

Toby has also insisted that neither of his parents pushed him into acting. “They tried quite hard to make sure it was what I wanted to do,” he told The Guardian in 2007. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh great, he’s going into the biz as well.’ It was more, ‘If this really is what you want to do, why? How many plays have you actually seen?’ “

According to Turner Classic Movies, he began his acting career immediately after graduating from the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art in 1991. In 1994, he played the title character in Coriolanus at the Royal Shakespeare Company. From there, Stephens has enjoyed a number of roles in stage productions and on television, gaining attention as the youngest person to play a Bond villain when he took on Gustav Graves in Die Another Day.

Toby and his wife, Anna-Louise Plowman, are the parents of three children: son Eli Alistair and daughters Tallulah and Kura. The pair married in September 2001. Plowman also works as an actor, and the couple costarred in the play Private Lives in 2013. Toby later told The Independent that they weren’t initially sure that working together was a good idea.

“We both had mixed feelings about doing it, because it’s always a bit of a risk,” he said. “It’s never guaranteed that it’s going to be an easy experience, but it was really lovely to spend some time together.”

In 2018, Toby joined the cast of the Netflix series Lost In Space, which ran for a few seasons until its conclusion in 2021. In 2019, he spoke to SYFY WIRE about his character, whom he admired for several reasons. “What I like about the way John Robinson is developing is that although he’s kind of a masculine stereotype — he’s a former soldier, he’s a guy who has lived in a guy’s world — but then he’s having to adapt to living with his family again,” he said. “So, at first, it seems like he’s a male stereotype, but as the series goes on, in terms of who is leading, and who is the boss, it’s a mixture of him and [John’s wife] Maureen.”