We were devastated to hear of the passing of Dame Angela Lansbury aged 96. The TV and stage legend passed away peacefully in her sleep, just five days before her 97th birthday. In a statement, her family said;
"The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles,".
Whether she was playing a shrewd super-sleuth or a kindly cartoon teapot, there was always something incredibly special about the much-loved actress, Dame Angela Lansbury. Something that just made it feel like she was a friend, or even a lovely auntie we’d always known – despite the fact she was one of Britain’s most successful actresses with eight decades of show business to her name.
Angela Lansbury's younger years
Born in 1925 in London, Angela is the daughter of English politician Edgar Lansbury and Irish actress Monya Macgill. While there is a line of politicians in her family history, it was the sad death of her father that prompted nine-year-old Angela to follow her mother’s profession of acting instead as she sought refuge from grief in creating characters and stories.
In 1940, tired of the endless air raids of the Second World War that saw the family cowering in the basement of their Hampstead home, they packed up their bags for a new life in New York where Angela got a scholarship to study drama. At 16, she decamped to LA where she managed to get a contract with MGM. Suddenly this vulnerable evacuee living on a shoestring found herself dining out in swanky restaurants with film executives and even royalty. It was a culture shock that forced her to grow up fast.
At just 18, she took on the role of maid Nancy in Gaslight that would not only earn her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, but also set her glittering career on a path she followed ever since. Dozens of film appearances followed including The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate, often playing characters older than herself.
Angela was married twice
This older soul is also perhaps what attracted her to Richard Cromwell, an artist, decorator and former actor, who became her first husband when she was just 19 and he was 35. The marriage lasted just seven months after she came home one day to find a note that he had left. It later transpired he was homosexual – something Angela only discovered by reading about it in the newspapers. However, just a short time after she would meet the man that would be her second husband and lifelong companion, the British actor Peter Shaw. They had two children, Deidre Angela Shaw and Anthony, and were together for 54 years until his sad death in 2003.
A successful career on stage and screen
During the Sixties and Seventies, Angela switched gear to more musical roles, starring in a string of Broadway productions including Mame, Dear World, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. Nevertheless film still held a big allure for her and she starred in the likes of Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Death on the Nile (1978) and The Mirror Crack’d (1980), in which she played Agatha Christie’s tweedy amateur sleuth, Miss Marple.
And there’d be more crime-solving in store for Angela when she took on the part of mystery writer Jessica Fletcher in the long-running TV series Murder She Wrote which was at one point watched by 23 million people a week.
In 1991 she enchanted a whole new generation of fans as the big-hearted singing teapot Miss Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and later in 1997 as the voice of the Empress Dowager Marie in Anastasia.
Even into her 80s and 90s, Angela remains busy, returning to Broadway for a revival of Blithe Spirit and starring alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones in A Little Night Music. She also took on the role of Aunt March in the 2017 BBC series of Little Women and most recently stole everyone’s hearts as the balloon seller in the 2018 film Mary Poppins Returns.
In an interview with Closer Weekly magazine, Angela said that she didn't regret being a 'character actor' saying: “(It) gave me a much bigger career than I would have had if I had just been a glamour girl."
She leaves behind her beloved children and grandchildren but also a legacy that will live on. With all the hard work and time she dedicated to the historic roles that she played, it’s no wonder she ended up with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was made a Dame in 2014. Time after time, Angela was referred to as one of the most beloved actresses of our age, and it's not hard to see why.