Dame Angela Lansbury dies aged 96
Dame Angela Lansbury, three-time Oscar nominee with a career spanning eight decades and star of the US TV crime series Murder She Wrote had died in her sleep five days before her 97th birthday.
Born in London, in 1925, Dame Angela Lansbury, moved to New York and attended the foreign School of Dramatic Art, was noticed by a Hollywood executive at a party in 1942, and earned her first role as a maid in the 1944 film Gaslight. Her portrayal of sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the Television series Murder She Wrote gained her millions of fans across the world. She took up the role in 1984 and continued for 12 years and nine seasons, making her a fortune of over $100m. She was nominated for Oscar for Gaslight, and as sibyl in The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1945 and Laurence Harvey’s manipulative mother in The Manchurian Candidate in 1962 and also was given an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement, aged 88 in 2013, a Bafta in 2002 as well as a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. She also won several Tony Awards after moving to Broadway in the 1960s for her portrayal in Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd in 1970.
Dame Angela was married twice, briefly to the actor Richard Cromwell when she was 19 and later to the British actor and producer Peter Shaw, and remained together for over 50 years until his death in 2003. She is survived by three children and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.