Angela Lansbury, the London-born actress who for seven decades brought a commanding, ladylike presence to stage, screen and television — especially over the 12 years she played dauntless mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher on CBS’Murder, She Wrote— has died. She was 96.
Born Angela Brigid Lansbury, the future character actress (the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney’s animatedBeauty and the Beast) and leading lady (Broadway’s eccentric aunt in the musicalMame) was the daughter of Belfast-born actress Moyna MacGill and her second husband, lumber merchant Edgar Lansbury. “A true Irish beauty” is how Lansbury described her mother in a 1993 PEOPLE profile.
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“It was thanks to my mother who recognized in me an ability to cut up, to make believe, to run around being somebody other than the little girl that I was,” Lansbury toldMasterpiece Studiopodcastin 2018 of getting into show business. “It made her realize that I was a natural, and she, bless her heart, made the decisions for me very, very, very young.”
Still, being under contract to the biggest Dream Factory on the planet did little to boost the teen’s self-confidence, especially with the gorgeous Ava Gardner, Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr working on adjoining soundstages.
“I was a young woman looking for glamor and attention, and I didn’t really get it,” Lansbury told PEOPLE. “So what did I do? I got married at 19.”
The groom was handsome leading man Richard Cromwell, who turned out to be gay, something Lansbury didn’t learn until they separated nine months later. “My first great, great romance. It was a terrible tragedy,” she said, adding that the two remained friends until his death from cancer in 1960.
A New Start
Shortly after the divorce, she met Peter Shaw, a British actor who later became a prominent Hollywood agent. They were married in London in 1949, with Moyna serving as matron of honor.
A more substantial maternal role, as Laurence Harvey’s monster of a mother in 1962’sThe Manchurian Candidate(this time, she was only three years older than her screen son), established Lansbury’s reputation as a character actress, as well as earned her a third Oscar nomination.
Family Took Precedence
Problems of a highly personal nature — the Shaw children, Anthony (born in 1952) and Deirdre (in 1953), were both on hard drugs, the parents discovered — forced a 1971 family move to County Cork, Ireland, which, Lansbury said, “was one of the last places on earth that was fairly drug-free.”
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Commuting between Ireland, London and New York for the next decade until the kids were clean, Lansbury bounced back professionally in 1978, when she created the iconic role of murder accomplice Mrs. Lovett in the operatic Stephen Sondheim Broadway musicalSweeney Todd.
Besides winning another Tony, Lansbury’s path was paved to the role for which she will probably be best remembered and certainly most loved, Jessica Fletcher. Debuting in 1984,Murder, She Wroteput Lansbury front and center for 256 episodes, earning her an impressive 12 Emmy nominations — though, strangely, never a win.
“It’s awfully hard to tell the difference between the two,” Peter Shaw told PEOPLE when asked to compare his wife to Fletcher. (Shaw, 84, died in 2003.) “Angela has that marvelous gumption, and that’s one of the nice things that Jessica has.”
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Lansbury was awarded theTony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatrein June, marking her sixthTony Award overall.
The Broadway legend won four Tonys between the time she appeared as Mame Dennis in 1966’sMameand Mrs. Lovett in 1979’sSweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.She went on to win a fifth Tony for 2009’sBlithe Spirit, her first Tony for her performance in a play versus a musical.
“It has been an outstanding life, especially for me,” Lansbury told her peers when she received the SAG honor. “And the great news is, girls, the opportunities are out there for us at all ages. I mean, look at some of the exquisite work of the women in film today. I feel absolutely galvanized to keep going and strike out for new career goals … After all, a career, as far as I’m concerned, is still a work in progress.”
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At 92, the actress still had no plans to slow down. After starring in PBS’sLittle Womenminiseries where she worked with director Vanessa Caswill, thefirst female director she’d collaborated with in her 80-year career, Lansbury was asked if the show would be her final act.
“Well I wouldn’t say it’s my swan song. It’s not the last thing I’ll do. I’m already doing other things but it’s been said this would be my swan song. But it isn’t,” said Lansbury, who played the Balloon Lady in 2018’sMary Poppins Returns.
She added, “I know at 92 I should be thinking in terms of swanning out, but I don’t know if you have the energy and the enthusiasm and the interest, I don’t think you ever really stop.”
source: people.com
