(Photo: Getty Images)
Tributes are being paid to Dame Angela Lansbury, who has died at age 96. As the BBC reports, the sad news was shared in a family statement which confirmed the Murder, She Wrote star passed Tuesday (October 11), just five days short of her 97th birthday.
Lansbury was born in London in 1925, the daughter of politician Edgar Lansbury and actress Moyna Macgill. Her father died when she was nine years old, and six years later the family moved to New York City to escape war-torn London.
At 17, while working at a Los Angeles department store, she landed her first movie role. For her performance in that film, Gaslight, a psychological thriller that spawned the contemporary term "gaslighting," Lansbury earned the first of her three Oscar nominations. The others came for 1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray and 1962's The Manchurian Candidate.
Though she also appeared in the classic Disney movies Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and Beauty and the Beast (1991), as well as Emma Thompson's Nanny McPhee in 2005, Lansbury was arguably best known for her stage and TV work. She won her first Tony Award in 1966 for portraying the title character in the iconic musical Mame, then won again for Dear World in 1969, Gypsy in 1975, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 1979, and Blithe Spirit in 2009. Earlier this year, the Tonys recognized her remarkable Broadway career with a special Lifetime Achievement Award.
Her signature role came on TV, in the long-running detective series Murder, She Wrote, which ran on CBS for 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996. Lansbury won four Golden Globe awards and received 12 Emmy nominations for her performance as Jessica Fletcher, a mystery novelist from the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine, who moonlights as a successful amateur detective.
In a 2018 interview with the Australian show Studio 10, Lansbury recalled how she helped to transform Jessica Fletcher from the "kooky character" the writers originally envisaged into someone more grounded and inspiring.
“That’s all right up to a certain point, but I thought, ‘No, let’s make her a smart woman,’" Lansbury said. "And by the time we were finished she got back her sense of purpose as a woman, she was attractive, she had boyfriends, she had a nice wardrobe. She became much more of an everywoman rather than a kook."
You can watch the interview below.

Lansbury was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014 for services to drama, charitable work, and philanthropy. A year earlier, she received an Honorary Academy Award for her career achievements. She is survived by three children, three grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. Her husband of 54 years, the actor and producer Peter Shaw, passed in 2003.
Rest in Peace, Dame Angela Lansbury, and thank you for your contribution.