Angela Lansbury, ‘Murder, She Wrote’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ star, has passed away at age 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 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family said in a statement.
The actress had already enjoyed a long and successful career when she took on the small-screen role that many Americans will remember most — as mystery writer and amateur crime fighter Jessica Fletcher on the CBS Sunday night hit “Murder, She Wrote.”
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Born in London, England, on October 16, 1925, Angela began to study acting at the Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art until World War II forced her family to escape the London Blitz and emigrate to the United States.
In New York, she enrolled in the Feagin School of Dramatic Arts and, at 16, earned her first professional job performing in a Montreal cabaret act. Her family eventually relocated to Los Angeles, and, in 1944, director George Cukor cast the 17-year-old actress as the Cockney maid in Gaslight. The role not only won her a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but also an Academy Award® nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
A year later, Angela received a second Oscar®nomination for her performance as a music-hall singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
In 1966, Angela won the first of her five Tony® Awards for her performance as Mame Dennis in the hit musical Mame. She dazzled Broadway audiences with her interpretation of the madcap title role, displaying, for the first time, the full range of her extraordinary talents. Angela made her musical comedy motion picture debut in 1971, mesmerizing audiences as the delightful apprentice witch, Eglantine Price, in Disney’s fantasy Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
Twenty years later, Angela returned to Disney for Beauty and the Beast, in which she sang the Academy Award-winning title song of the same name. She encored as Mrs. Potts in Disney’s 1997 direct-to-video sequel Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas as well as the video game Kingdom Hearts II in 2006. Angela later served as a segment host for the Studio’s millennial animated classic Fantasia 2000, introducing Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.
Angela’s achievements on stage, screen, and television are too numerous to recount, but include six Golden Globes and eighteen Primetime Emmy® nominations. She is the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, and was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
She is survived by her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, her three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury. We give our condolences to Angela’s family and friends.
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