Fiona Shaw thought the world "felt emptier" when Dame Maggie Smith died

She told The Times: "I miss Maggie Smith a lot. She was hilarious. She came down one morning [on set] and said, 'I have to go back to bed. I can't stand the colour of that carpet.'

"The weird thing was, she meant it. When some people leave the planet you feel it is emptier for a moment. Maggie is one of those. I was very sad when I heard."

Meanwhile, the 'Bad Sisters' star - who played Petunia Dursley in the adaptations of J.K. Rowling's magical book series whilst Dame Maggie starred as Hogwarts deputy headmistress Professor McGonagall - lost her brother Peter when he died in a car accident at the age of just 18, and explained that she is "talking about him a lot" now that she is making regular trips back to her native Ireland.

She said: "He should be here now and he isn't. It was a terrible thing to happen. I wasn't living at home; that was hard. I went back for the funeral and then had to return to England to rehearse.

"It was very disassociating. One morning I went for a walk in Stratford at 6am and I thought I saw him. I saw this blond head walking along by the river and I was sure it was him. I read sometime later that this does happen. That's the magical thinking of loss. I'm visiting Ireland a lot because my mother's very old and my brothers are often there. We have been talking about him a lot."