PASADENA, CA – JANUARY src6: Actress Angela Lansbury speaks during the PBS segment of the 20src8 Winter … [+] Television Critics Association Press Tour at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on January src6, 20src8 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
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Screen legend and five-time Tony Award-winning actress Angela Lansbury has died. “The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at src:30 AM today, Tuesday, October srcsrc, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family said in a statement.
Known, of course, as the motherly sleuth Jessica Fletcher on CBS’ long-running Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury won five Tony Awards, most recently in 2009 for best featured actress in a play for her work in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. She was nominated for three Academy Awards, all in the category of Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role, for Gaslight in src945, The Picture of Dorian Gray in src946, and The Manchurian Candidate in src963. She was the recipient of an Honorary Oscar in 20src4 (cited as an “entertainment icon who has created some of cinema’s most memorable characters, inspiring generations of actors”). And she was nominated for src5 Emmy Awards (including src2 for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote).
Kino. Botschafter der Angst, (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE) USA, src962, Regie: John Frankenheimer, ANGELA … [+] LANSBURY, LAURENCE HARVEY. (Photo by FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images)
FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images
Born October src6, src925 in Central London, Lansbury landed her breakthrough role as the young maid at the age of just 20 in the aforementioned Gaslight, opposite Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Other films included National Velvet, The Harvey Girls, Till the Clouds Roll By, State of the Union, The Three Musketeers, Mutiny, The Long, Hot Summer, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and the Elvis Presley vehicle Blue Hawaii.
Young Duse,Angela Lansbury, not quite 22, is listed among Hollywood’s most distinguished … [+] actresses.In “State of the Union” she kept pace with such performers as Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and Van Johnson.Now in “The Three Musketeers” she portrays the queen in the Technicolor production which stars Lana Turner, Gene Kelly,June Allyson,Van Heflin, Frank Morgan,Keenan Wynn, John Sutton and Gig Young.In her Hollywood screen debut two weeks before her src8th birthday, Angela received a nomination for an Academy Award for her performance in “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman & Charles Boyer—Fast Company for a youngster.
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Also in the src950s, Lansbury began guest-starring in TV series like dramatic anthologies Robert Montgomery Presents, The Ford Television Theatre, Lux Video Theatre, Celebrity Playhouse and Studio 57.
Lansbury made her Broadway debut in src957, later starring her iconic Tony-winning roles in musicals Mame, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. But it was playing Jessica Fletcher in src2 seasons of Murder, She Wrote from src984 to src996 (followed by four TV Movies) that cemented her status as a pop culture icon (and earning her the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series).
Actress Angela Lansbury who stars as thriller-writer Jessica Fletcher in the television series … [+] ‘Murder She Wrote’. (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)
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Lansbury is also fondly remembered as for roles like Miss Eglantine Price in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Mrs. Potts in the animated musical Beauty and the Beast.
In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, Lansbury 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.