Maggie Smith with her son Toby Stephens
Maggie Smith with her son Toby Stephens. What? Yes!
Incidentally, Maggie's elder son Chris Larkin is also an actor.
When Toby was studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, a rumour went round that one of the students was Maggie Smith's child. Everyone suspected another young man of the same age, whose mother actually worked as a cleaner in Leeds, and people kept coming up to him to say "I love your mum".
Toby dates his first memory of his mother on stage to the age of four, when Maggie played Peter Pan at the London Coliseum in 1973. "I vaguely remember going backstage after the performance and asking: Where were you? We've just seen the most amazing show," Toby says in a recent interview with The Times. Stephens names as his mother's greatest legacy not her name or her two Oscars, but the constant diligence that has marked her whole life.
Stephens dislikes it when his pedigree comes up in conversation about him, so it is easier for him to work in the States, where nobody takes much interest in newcomers.
