Angela Lansbury, Legendary Actress, Has Died
Legendary actress Angela Lansbury has died at age 96.
Angela Lansbury has died at the age of 96, after a long, legendary, and highly acclaimed career working with major studios like Disney and networks like CBS, as well as earning multiple Academy Award nominations. According to a report in Variety, Angela Lansbury is survived by her children, writer Deirdre Shaw, director Anthony Shaw, and her stepson David Shaw, as well as numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and her brother Edgar. Per a statement from her family, the legendary actress of stage and screen died peacefully in her sleep.
Angela Lansbury was born in London in 1925 to an Irish actress and an English politician. From an early age, she was interested in acting; her older half-sister was married to actor Peter Ustinov and she studied at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art. Angela Lansbury moved to the United States during the Nazi bombardment of London during World War II, and she soon began performing in theatrical productions.
She had her first breakthrough performance in the 1944 George Cukor film Gaslight, which also starred actress Ingrid Bergman and earned Angela Lansbury her first Academy Award nomination. Angela Lansbury was signed to MGM for a seven-year contract, which included notable films like the Elizabeth Taylor vehicle National Velvet and The Three Musketeers. She would later go independent and eventually became known for playing characters significantly older than herself, a reputation that would stick for the rest of her career.
Over the course of her career, Angela Lansbury was nominated for an Academy Award three times: first for Gaslight, then for The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), and finally for the influential John Frankenheimer thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962). She never won a competitive Academy Award, but received an honorary lifetime award in 2013. Famously, she won 12 consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series for her CBS mystery procedural show Murder, She Wrote, a record that still stands.
To many audiences, Angela Lansbury will be most famous for Murder, She Wrote, in which she played the mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher, who inevitably gets drawn into solving an actual crime in almost every episode. The role was first offered to Jean Stapleton and Doris Day, but Angela Lansbury made it her own. The show ran for 12 seasons, with the actress reprising the role in numerous television films.
In addition to Murder, She Wrote, Angela Lansbury was known for her work with Walt Disney Pictures. She starred as an amateur witch attempting to aid the British war effort in World War II via magic in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which received five Academy Award nominations (notably for its groundbreaking combination of animation and live-action). Even more famously, she voiced Mrs. Potts in the 1991 Disney film Beauty and the Beast, earning a Grammy award for singing the theme song “Beauty and the Beast (Tale as Old as Time).”
Angela Lansbury had a career that spanned eight decades and stretched from the Golden Age of Hollywood to the modern era, bringing joy to tens of millions. RIP Angela Lansbury.
