Legend of the stage and screen Angela Lansbury has died at the age of 96. Lansbury’s family said in a statement, “The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday.”
Lansbury was a Broadway icon and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning five. She debuted now legendary roles in “Mame,” “Dear World,” “Sweeney Todd,” and also won for her turns in “Gypsy” and “Blithe Spirit.” On screen, she was Oscar nominated for roles in “Gaslight,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and “The Manchurian Candidate,” and she received a lifetime achievement award from the Academy in 2013. Lansbury was one of the last stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
But perhaps Lansbury’s two most iconic roles were as Jessica Fletcher in “Murder, She Wrote,” and Mrs. Potts in 1991’s “Beauty and the Beast,” who sings the title song. “Murder, She Wrote” premiered in 1984 and ran for 12 seasons, plus four TV movies. She was Emmy nominated 18 times, but never won, and received a Grammy nomination for her work on the “Beauty and the Beast” soundtrack.
Lansbury was born in London in 1925 to an Irish mother and English father. As a teenager during World War II, her family moved to America, and she went to study acting in New York City. She would continue to star in plays and musicals on Broadway and London’s West End throughout her life. Her last major Broadway role was in 2012’s “The Best Man,” and in 2014 she returned to “Blithe Spirit” in a London production.
Lansbury’s final television role came in the BBC’s 2017 miniseries of “Little Women,” in which she played Aunt March alongside Maya Hawke as Jo. Her final Broadway appearance came in a one-night staging of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” in 2019.
Lansbury was married twice. She married her first husband, Richard Cromwell, in 1945. They divorced a year later, but remained friends until his death. She wed her second husband, Peter Shaw, in 1949, and they were together until his death in 2003. They had two children together, plus a son from Shaw’s previous marriage.
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