Angela Lansbury, the scene-stealing British actor who kicked up her heels in many Broadway musicals and solved endless murders as crime novelist Jessica Fletcher in the long-running TV series 'Murder, She Wrote', has died. She was 96. According to a statement from her three children, Lansbury passed away on October 11 at her home in Los Angeles. She died five days shy of her 97th birthday.
Hers was a 75-year career that included beloved musicals on stage, iron-fisted matriarchs on film, singing the theme song for the animated movie 'Beauty and the Beast', being made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II and the creation of one of television's best-loved characters.
Lansbury won five Tony Awards for her Broadway performances and a lifetime achievement award. She earned Academy Award nominations as a supporting actress for two of her first three films, 'Gaslight' (1945) and 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (1946) and was nominated again in 1962 for 'The Manchurian Candidate' and her deadly portrayal of a Communist agent and the title character's mother.
Her mature demeanour prompted producers to cast her much older than her actual age. In 1948, when she was 23, her hair was streaked with gray so she could play a forty-ish newspaper publisher with a yen for Spencer Tracy in 'State of the Union'.
Her stardom came in middle age when she became the hit of the New York theater, winning Tony Awards for 'Mame' (1966), 'Dear World' (1969), 'Gypsy' (1975) and 'Sweeney Todd' (1979).