Angela Lansbury, Beloved Actress and 'Murder, She Wrote' Star, Dead at 96
Dame Angela Lansbury -- movie star, stage sensation and beloved television icon with a career spanning more than seven decades -- has died. She was 96.
"The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30am, today, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday," Lansbury's rep, Michael McConnell, said in a statement to ET on behalf of the actress' family. "In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre, and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury. She was proceeded in death by her husband of 53 years, Peter Shaw. A private family ceremony will be held at a date to be determined."
Perhaps best known for her TV role as everyone's favorite detective on Murder, She Wrote, the London-born Lansbury was as legendary as she was lovable -- so much so that she scored a perfect 100 on TV Guide's ultra-scientific "lovability index" in the mid-1990s.
The daughter of an actress and a wealthy politician, a pre-teen Lansbury, buried between the arts and politics, took to acting as a method of coping with her father's untimely death, which she described as "the defining moment" of her life. Upon moving to the United States while World War II was still raging, Lansbury was quickly contracted by MGM, where she appeared in her first film (Gaslight, 1944), earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the young age of 19.
While Lansbury landed her second Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win just a year later for her role as a working-class music hall singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray, she was often quick to dismiss her years with MGM, who frequently miscast her in older, somewhat villainous roles alongside the likes of Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor and Judy Garland.
"I was always playing somebody else, a different kind of woman than I was myself," she told Parade of her time with the media conglomerate. "I regret terribly the years that I wasted playing a bunch of women who weren’t me at all."
It was during this time the British character actress met her second and longtime husband, Peter Shaw, shortly after ending a brief marriage to Richard Cromwell (Lansbury later found out Cromwell was gay). Married to Lansbury for 54 years, Shaw went on to become a top Hollywood agent and managed his wife's career before his death in 2003.
Several films and two children later -- Anthony and Deirdre were born in 1952 and 1953 respectively -- Lansbury began to dabble in stage work and landed a notable role as Raymond Shaw's mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), securing her third Academy Award nomination, again for Best Supporting Actress.
But it was Broadway and live theatre that truly brought Lansbury alive as an actress, cementing her superstar status. She described her starring role as the eccentric Mame Dennis in Mame as "a golden era," one in which she took home her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 1966. She later nabbed a Lead Actress Tony for Dear World, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd.
Following a handful of other films and theatrical productions, including Disney's commercial hit musical Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Lansbury achieved global fame on the small screen starring in Murder, She Wrote as super-sleuth Jessica Fletcher, a widowed, retired English teacher-turned-mystery-novelist who pounded away at her typewriter by day and solved local murders by night.
"I didn’t want her to be a character -- I wanted her to be every woman," Lansbury told Parade of playing Fletcher. "I think that’s what gave her the longevity. Every woman could connect with her, and every man could. She was a strong, real woman, and men like that in women."
The hit CBS series served to be a ratings dream for over a decade, also bestowing onto Lansbury a whopping 12 Primetime Emmy nominations for Lead Actress in a Drama Series -- one for each year the series aired from 1984 until 1996.
While not on the Murder, She Wrote set, Lansbury added other films and television roles to her repertoire, including lending her voice to the motherly teapot, Mrs. Potts, in Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991).
Following her husband's death, the actress took a slight step back from the screen and stage, taking on select roles as they piqued her interest. An appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit garnered Lansbury with another Emmy nomination, and she was also spotted in 2007's limited-run Broadway production of Deuce and 2011's Mr. Popper's Penguins opposite Jim Carrey.
In 2014, Lansbury was officially made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II, who bestowed the honor onto the actress for her lifetime of acting and charity work.
The celebrated actress also joined Emily Blunt in Mary Poppins Returns and took on the role of cantankerous Aunt March in the BBC television miniseries remake of Little Women.
As for what Lansbury had hoped to accomplish during her final years, she shared with Parade, "Just to grow old gracefully and to hopefully still be able to bring something positive to the lives around me. And to be remembered as an OK gal."
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