Beloved Murder, She Wrote star Angela Lansbury dies at 96 | CNN

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Angela Lansbury, who had an eclectic, award-winning film and stage career and also became America’s Favorite TV Detective on “Murder, She Wrote,” has died, according to a statement from her family provided to NBC, whose parent company produced the long-running series. She was 96.

“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are saddened to announce that their mother passed away peacefully in her sleep at 1:30am today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022 at her home in Los Angeles, just five days before her 97th birthday ‘ her family said in a statement.

CNN has reached out to Lansbury officials for comment.

Barely 20 years old, Lansbury received her first Oscar nomination for her film debut, Gaslight, in 1944. Her second came the next year for The Portrait of Dorian Gray and again in 1962 as a mother betraying her son and her country in The Manchurian Candidate. (She received Golden Globes for the last two films.)

The actress accepted an honorary Oscar in 2013 to match the five Tony Awards she has collected over 40 years – starting with “Mame” in 1966 and ending for a revival of the Noel Coward play “Blithe Spirit” in 2009. Lansbury also garnered 11 Emmy nominations for her role as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, but never won.

Lansbury went from naïve to middle-aged almost overnight. For example, she was only 37 when she portrayed Laurence Harvey’s conniving mother in Manchurian Candidate, even though her co-star was only two years her junior.

Her London-born mother, Moyna MacGill, was an actress and her father, Edward Lansbury, was a politician. He died when she was just nine years old, and not long after World War II began, the family moved to the United States in 1940, settling in New York.

Lansbury studied acting before moving to Los Angeles at her mother’s urging, where she briefly worked in a department store before getting her breakthrough role as a young maid in Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.

Other films include National Velvet (plays Elizabeth Taylor’s sister), The Harvey Girls, The Three Musketeers, the Danny Kaye comedy The Court Jester, and the Elvis Presley vehicle Blue Hawaii.

Lansbury made her Broadway debut in 1957 and later starred in legendary Tony-winning roles in Mame, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd.

Generations of children adored Lansbury for her Disney roles, first in the 1971 film musical Bedknobs and Broomsticks and later as the voice of Mrs. Potts in the Oscar-nominated 1991 animated film Beauty and the Beast. She also acted a small role in the 2018 sequel Mary Poppins Returns.

“Oddly enough, kids recognize my voice,” she told the Huffington Post in 2012. “They’ll hear me and say, ‘Mom, that’s Mrs. Potts!'”

After a short-lived marriage to actor Richard Cromwell, Lansbury married British actor Peter Shaw in 1949. They remained together until his death in 2003 and had two children, Anthony – who directed many episodes of Murder, She Wrote – and Deirdre. Shaw eventually became her manager and was instrumental in the deal that made her the producers of the series, which premiered in 1984.

Lansbury’s greatest fame came in her 60s for her starring role in Murder, She Wrote as a crime writer. Of all her roles, Lansbury said Jessica Fletcher resembled her the most.

“I had a lot to say and didn’t want the character to be quirky,” she told The New York Times in 2009. “I wanted her to be real. I didn’t want to have to dress up 24 hours a day, which is what a TV program can feel like sometimes.”

Despite the success of “Murder, She Wrote,” audiences were aging, and CBS irritated Lansbury by moving the series to Thursday nights in 1995 alongside NBC’s “Friends,” in what turned out to be the mystery’s final season.

“I’m devastated,” Lansbury told the Los Angeles Times, adding, “I’m really angry with all the people who watched us on Sunday,” where the show had consistently had great ratings after 60 Minutes.

After the series ended, Lansbury starred in several Murder, She Wrote TV movies. She continued to work into her 80’s and 90’s including a 2017 mini-series version of Little Women and starred in a 2015 Great Performances production of Driving Miss Daisy opposite James Earl Jones.

“I love this industry and I love being in it,” Lansbury said in a 1998 interview with the Archives of American Television, adding, referring to the “Murder” audience, “They loved it and they were loyal.”