Angela Lansbury

Irish-British actress

Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury DBE (October 16, 1925 – October 11, 2022) was an Irish-British and American film, stage, and television actress.Her career spanned eight decades, much of it in the United States, and her work received a great deal of international attention.

At the time of her death, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.

Lansbury received many accolades throughout her career, including six Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), six Golden Globe Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and the Academy Honorary Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, eighteen Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award.

In 2014, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Lansbury Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family in Central London, the daughter of Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury.

She moved to the United States in 1940 to escape the Blitz and studied acting in New York City.Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed with MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944), National Velvet (1944), and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning two Academy Award nominations and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.

She appeared in eleven more MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract ended in 1952, she began to supplement her cinematic work with theatrical appearances.

Although she was largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her role in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim, and it is frequently cited as one of her best performances.

It earned her a third Academy Award nomination and another Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.In 1964, Lansbury transitioned to the Broadway stage in her first musical, Stephen Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle.

Lansbury gained stardom playing the titular role in Jerry Herman's musical Mame (1966), winning her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, and establishing her as a gay icon.

She received two more Tony Awards for her starring roles as Countess Aurelia in Dear World in 1969 and Rose in Gypsy in 1973, as well as a nomination for her role as Anna in The King and I in 1978.

She cemented her status as a Broadway icon in 1979 portraying Mrs.Lovett in Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and garnering her fourth Tony Award.

Lansbury earned international acclaim on television portraying the fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the CBS whodunit series Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996), among the longest-running and most popular detective series in television history.

Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband, Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and served as its executive producer during the final four seasons.

She was also associated with roles in family films such as Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), The Last Unicorn (1982), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Anastasia (1997).

Lansbury toured in a variety of international stage productions and returned to Broadway at the age of 84, earning her fifth Tony Award playing Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit (2009).

Lansbury's later film appearances include Nanny McPhee (2005), Mary Poppins Returns (2018), and a (posthumous) cameo in Glass Onion (2022).