Just when you thought that Downton Abbey's dowager countess can't top her own verbal outbursts - "What is a weekend?" - it looks like Dame Maggie Smith, who plays old Lady Grantham on the hit TV series, is flinging some zingers of her own.
She tells 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft on Sunday night that she doesn't watch the show, which centers on the lives of the aristocrats and their servants who live on a vast estate in rural England in the early part of the 20th century.
"I haven't actually seen it, so I don't - I don't sit down and watch it," she tells Kroft. "Never?" he asks. "No, I haven't watched it," she replies.
Smith, 78, who has won two Oscars, three Emmys and a Tony, tells Kroft she may watch the show someday but says she's afraid that if she watches, she'll "agonize" over her performance. "Because it's frustrating. I always see things that I would like to do differently and think, 'Oh, why in the name of God did I do that?' "
Best known for her starring role in 1969's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Smith also tells Kroft she doesn't give a hoot about her current celebrity thanks to the hugely popular Downton Abbey.
"I don't feel any different to the way I felt before and I'm not quite sure what (being a star) means. I am familiar to people now, which is what I was not before," she says. "That is entirely due to the television set."
Sunday night (9 ET/PT) also marks the closing episode of Season 3 of Downton Abbey on PBS.
