Angela Lansbury
Many people will forever remember Angela Lansbury as the character “Jessica Fletcher” on the long-lived, highly acclaimed TV series Murder, She Wrote. Lansbury, who played Jessica for twelve years, is a living acting legend today, and has won and been nominated for a plethora of Tony, Oscar, Emmy, Academy and Golden Globe Awards.
Angela was born on October 16, 1925, in London, . She and her mother, actress Moyna MacGill, emigrated to the during World War II. After Angela became a citizen in 1951, she decided to pursue a career in acting and worked in a department store in order to support herself.
Her wide and varied film, television, and Broadway acting career has spanned more than sixty years, from her film debut in 1944 (Gaslight, with Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, and Joseph Cotten) to 2005s Nanny McPhee, starring Emma Thompson and Colin Firth.
Some of her better known films include National Velvet (1944), with Mickey Rooney, Donald Crisp, Elizabeth Taylor, and Anne Revere; The Three Musketeers (1948), starring Lana Turner and Gene Kelly; Samson and Delilah (1949), starring Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature; The Manchurian Candidate (1962), featuring Frank Sinatra; The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a story of the life of Christ, in which Angela portrayed the character Claudia, and Charlton Heston played John the Baptist; and The Lady Vanishes (1979) opposite Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd.
On Broadway, Angela enjoyed many successes, most notably with the title role of the musical Mame opposite Bea Arthur in 1966. The play ran for 1,508 performances and earned Angela her first Tony Award (Best Leading Actress in a Musical), the first of many for her Broadway work.
Angela is also renowned for her character voice acting, particularly as Eglantine Price in Walt Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Mommy Fortuna in 1982s The Last Unicorn, with Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, and Christopher Lee, and as Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast in 1991, which also features the voice talents of Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, and Bradley Pierce.
But as extensive as her list is in film acting, Broadway, and voice acting, Angela Lansbury will forever be etched in our souls as Jessica Fletcher, mystery writer on Murder, She Wrote, a fantastic murder-mystery TV program that lasted from 1984 to 1996. The hit series was the longest running prime-time detective drama series in the history of American television and through its success, Angela became one of the highest paid actresses ever.
Angela was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the early 1990s and was named a Disney Legend in 1995. She also received a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 and Kennedy Center Honors in 2000.
Angela has been married twice. Her first marriage was to actor Richard Cromwell and lasted a mere year. She then wed to actor and businessman Peter Shaw from 1948 until his death in 2003. She has two children, one stepchild, and several grandchildren. |
