Dame Angela Lansbury passes

Early life

The London-born star was the daughter of Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury. Born Oct. 16, 1925, she began acting as a young girl – as she told it, playing characters was how she coped with her father’s death when she was 9 years old. As she grew into her teenage years, she became a devoted moviegoer who studied music and acting. In 1940, as World War II’s Blitz brought frequent bombs to London, she came to America with her mother and brothers.




Movie career

Only a few years after immigrating to America, Lansbury landed her first film role, and it was a hit. She played scheming maid Nancy Oliver in “Gaslight” (1944), and she received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.



Her second film, “National Velvet” (1944), would bring her a lifelong friend in her co-star, Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011), while her third, 1945’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” netted a second Academy Award nomination, as well as a Golden Globe win.



Lansbury was in dozens of films over the course of her career, with notable films including “The Long, Hot Summer” (1958), “The Manchurian Candidate”



(1962), “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” (1971), and “The Pirates of Penzance” (1983).



Though Lansbury would be nominated for three Oscars – the third for 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate” – she never won a competitive Academy Award. In 2013, she was feted with an honorary Academy Award for her lifetime of acting achievements.

Broadway success

Lansbury appeared in dozens of films in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, and in 1966, she launched another successful facet of her career – musical theater on the Broadway stage. She starred in the title role of “Mame,” putting her childhood music lessons to good use as she won a Tony Award.



It was the first of five Tonys she would win – “Dear World,” “Gypsy,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Blithe Spirit” would all earn her best actress Tony awards.



An iconic TV role

In 1984, Lansbury took on her most iconic role, one that would last 12 years and bring her face into households worldwide each week. Playing detective novelist Jessica Fletcher – who also had a penchant for solving real-world mysteries – Lansbury made “Murder, She Wrote” a popular CBS hit – initially with an audience of mostly older adults, but soon branching out to appeal to a variety of ages.



Lansbury believed the show’s popularity was due, in part, to the way it approached the detective genre without using blood or gore: As she commented, “best of all, there’s no violence. I hate violence.” The show was a ratings leader and allowed Lansbury to develop her career as she became producer and, later, executive producer.

Later career

The broad fame Lansbury gained while starring on “Murder, She Wrote” led to other popular roles, such as voicing Mrs. Potts in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” (1991). Though Lansbury was in her 70s when “Murder, She Wrote” ended in 1996, her career was far from over. She continued to appear on Broadway, on TV and in films including “Nanny McPhee,” “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” and “Mary Poppins Returns.”

Lansbury on being identified as Jessica Fletcher

“It’s OK with me. She’s a character known worldwide. She speaks every language; she’s in every country. She seems to be a universal woman that the world really likes, accepts and recognizes me for. That, I would say, was my most far-reaching role in my theatrical life.” —from a 2018 interview with People magazine.





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