Angela Lansbury, London-born actress, whose career spanned eight decades and included hits in film (“The Manchurian Candidate”), TV (“Murder, She Wrote”) and theater (“Ma’am” and “Sweeney Todd”), has passed away. At the age of 96.
Her family announced her death, saying she died Tuesday morning “peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles.”
A private family ceremony will be held on the date set for Lansbury, who would have turned 97 on Sunday.
One of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Lansbury first rose to prominence as an MGM player, earning his first film roles in 1944’s “Gaslight” and 1945’s “The Picture of Dorian Grey.” Award nomination received.
In 1962, she earned another Oscar nomination for “The Manchurian Candidate,” playing the mother of a war hero—an actor, played by Lawrence Harvey, who was only three years younger than her. (She would later receive an Honorary Academy Award in 2013.) A decade later, she earned back-to-back Golden Globe nominations for two different films — the 1970 black comedy opposite Michael York and 1971’s Disney ” Something for Everyone” from the film “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.”
Although she was the rare movie star who regularly appeared on TV in the 1950s and ’60s, she found new fame in the 1980s and ’90s as a mystery writer on the long-running CBS mystery series “Murder”. Sleuth as Jessica Fletcher. He wrote.” The show cemented his fame—and his public persona as a sociable but no-nonsense type—and earned him 12 consecutive Emmy Award nominations, one for each season. Received six additional Emmy nominations – but never won a competitive award.
She was more successful on Broadway, where she earned a total of five Tony Awards For his work in a string of hit musicals beginning with “Ma’am” in 1966, followed by “Dear World” (1969), “Gypsy” (1975) and Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” (1979) – where he She debuted the role of the vagabond-killing meat-pie-shop owner Mrs. Lovett.
Not long after “Murder, She Wrote” in 1996, Lansbury continued to work on both stage and screen. She appeared in select projects during the show – she voiced the singing teapot Mrs. Potts, who sang the title song in Disney’s animated 1991 hit “Beauty and the Beast” – but with a range of grandmother roles. Cashed in on his small screen success with 2005’s “Nanny McPhee,” the 2011 Jim Carrey vehicle “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” and 2018’s “Mary Poppins Returns.”
She returned to Broadway after an absence of more than two decades—earning three more Tony nominations and winning her fifth prize as clairvoyant Madame Arkati in the 2009 revival of Noel Coward’s comedy “Blythe Spirit.”
Lansbury is survived by his three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, three grandchildren, Peter, Catherine and Ian, as well as five great-grandchildren and his brother, producer Edgar Lansbury. She was put to death by her 53-year-old husband Peter Shaw.
