10/16/22, 11:46 PM Angela Lansbury -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury, in full Dame Angela Lansbury, (born October 16, 1925, London, England—died
October 11, 2022, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), British-born American character actress who achieved
success and fame for her stage, lm, and television work.
Lansbury and her widowed mother, actress Moyna MacGill, came from England to the United States in
1940. From 1940 to 1942 Lansbury studied acting at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio in New
York City. Her rst lm came in the psychological thriller Gaslight (1944), and her performance as a
London maid who caused trouble earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.
She next appeared as Elizabeth Taylor’s snobby sister in National Velvet (1944), and she received
another Oscar nomination the following year for her supporting performance in The Picture of Dorian
Gray (1945).
Lansbury played wicked or good characters with equal ease and displayed her abilities to act both ways
in such lms as The Harvey Girls (1946), State of the Union (1948), and The Three Musketeers (1948).
She continued to perform memorable character roles during the 1950s, most notably in A Lawless Street
(1955), The Court Jester (1956), and The Long, Hot Summer (1958).
Her later movies included Death on the Nile (1978); The Mirror Crack’d (1980), in which she starred as
Miss Jane Marple; and the family comedies Nanny McPhee (2005), Mr. Popper’s Penguins (2011), and
Mary Poppins Returns (2018).
Although Lansbury achieved a measure of success in lms, it was the Broadway stage that provided her
with the roles that made her a star. She started performing on Broadway in Hotel Paradiso (1957) and
had leading roles in A Taste of Honey (1960) and the Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle
(1964). Her breakthrough came in the title role of the musical Mame (1966), for which she won her rst
Tony Award.
Lansbury was supreme as queen of Broadway for several years and won three additional Tony Awards,
for her roles in Dear World (1969), Gypsy (1975), and Sweeney Todd (1979). In 2009 she earned a fth
Tony Award, for her performance as a strange fortuneteller in Blithe Spirit. Five years later she played
the role again in the West End production of the play in London, and she later won an Olivier Award for
best actress in a supporting role.
Lansbury’s greatest popular triumph came when she was chosen for the leading role of mystery author
Jessica Fletcher in the television series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for 12 seasons, beginning in 1984.
Lansbury was made executive producer of the show in 1992, and she continued to appear occasionally
as Jessica Fletcher in TV movies for years after the series had of cially ended. Also a renowned voiceover artist, Lansbury lent her vocal skills to such animated features as The Last Unicorn (1982), Beauty
and the Beast (1991), Anastasia (1997), Fantasia 2000 (1999), and The Grinch (2018).
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Lansbury received an honorary Academy Award in 2013 and a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in
2022. In addition, she was included in the New Year Honors List for 2014 as Dame Commander of the
Order of the British Empire (DBE).