Actress and TV mainstay, Angela Lansbury, has died at the age of 96, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The award-winning actress whose career spanned seven decades passed quietly in her sleep Tuesday morning as confirmed by a statement from her family. Lansbury would have turned 97 on the 16th.
Lansbury, best known for her Emmy-nominated role as TV’s Jessica Fletcher in CBS’ Murder, She Wrote, was born in London in 1925. According to The Hollywood Reporter, she moved to the United States after World War II with her mother and two twin brothers. After attending and graduating from New York City’s Feagin School of Dramatic Art, a nearly adult Lansbury scored her first paying gig in Montreal. She then moved to California with her actress mother where she scored her first film role through MGM. The role in 1944’s Gaslight earned a 19-year-old Lansbury her first of three Oscar nominations.
After years in movies with no great ascension, Lansbury found her true gift in theatre, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She would go on and earn five Tony Awards for her work in various musicals including 2009’s Blithe Spirit. She also appeared in the original run of Sweeny Todd in 1979. By the 1980s, in her 50s, Lansbury had grown tired of the stage, yet had no real interest in maneuvering to the new medium of America, television.
“I couldn’t imagine I would ever want to do television,” Lansbury recalled in a 1985 interview with The New York Times via The Hollywood Reporter. “But the year 1983 rolled around and Broadway was not forthcoming, so I took a part in a miniseries, Gertrude Whitney in Little Gloria, Happy at Last [a dramatization of Gloria Vanderbilt‘s childhood].” Following a few more roles in miniseries, Lansbury was approached by the creators of the great trenchcoat detective, Columbo, and was pitched the concept of a similar amateur sleuth in Cabot Cove’s Fletcher.
“What appealed to me about Jessica Fletcher,” she said per The New York Times, “is that I could do what I do best and [play someone I have had] little chance to play — a sincere, down-to-earth woman. Mostly, I’ve played very spectacular bitches. Jessica has extreme sincerity, compassion, extraordinary intuition. I’m not like her. My imagination runs riot. I’m not a pragmatist. Jessica is.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Murder, She Wrote ran for twelve seasons at CBS, ranking in the top 13 of the Nielsen ratings for Sunday primetime during its first 11 seasons. Despite its popularity with TV viewers, the show would only covet two Emmys out of 41 nominations, with three being for Outstanding Drama Series. Lansbury herself was nominated each year for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series but never won. She would eventually receive an honorary Emmy and Oscar later in her career.
In addition to Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury was known for her roles in Disney’s fantastical Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Oscar-nominated Beauty and the Beast. She also garnered Oscar nominations for 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and 1962’s chilling The Manchurian Candidate, via The Hollywood Reporter.
Lansbury, who was married twice, leaves behind three children: Anthony, Deirdre, and David; one sibling, Edgar; three grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren, via The Hollywood Reporter. A private ceremony will be held at a later date.