Angela Lansbury

British-American-Irish actress who played many theatre, television, and film roles. Her career spanned almost eight decades, much of it in the United States. Her work received much international attention. At the time of her death she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.

She was the recipient of numerous accolades, including six Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), six Golden Globe Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and the Academy Honorary Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, eighteen Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award.

Lansbury was said to be as gracious personally as she was on camera. She achieved stardom in the '60s, first as a Broadway musical star in Mame then, from 1984 to 1996, as Jessica Fletcher in the popular hit TV series, Murder She Wrote.

Lansbury was the daughter of a lumber merchant and a noted stage actress, Irish beauty Moyna MacGill, Lansbury's dad passed away when she was nine. It was her grandfather who was a noted public figure, a Labour Party leader. Her sister Isolde married Peter Ustinov. Her mother took her and her twin brothers to the U.S. during wartime, in 1940. The family was always close and mutually supportive.

Lansbury's film debut as a cockney maid in Gaslight in 1944 brought in her first of three Oscar nominations, along with The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Her starring role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966) won four Tony Awards and established her as a gay icon. She did voice-over work for the Disney studio in a main screen production and the ensuing video series releases.

Lansbury made an early marriage at 20 for nine months to Richard Cromwell, who was gay and trying to convince himself that it was not so.