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Angela Brigid Lansbury, CBE (born October 16, 1925) is an Oscar-nominated English born American actress.

Early life

Lansbury was born in London, the daughter of a Belfast-born actress, Moyna MacGill and the granddaughter of Labour politician George Lansbury. At age 14, when World War II began, she emigrated with her mother to the United States and became a naturalised citizen in 1951.

As a struggling young actress in Los Angeles, Lansbury worked at the Bullocks Wilshire department store.

Career

Lansbury made her Academy Award nominated film debut in 1944 as an impertinent maid in the film Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. This was followed by another Oscar nomination for her role as Sibyl Vane in film adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). She has since enjoyed a long and varied career, mainly as a film actress, appearing in everything from Samson and Delilah (1949) to Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

Lansbury was in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) as the icy, ruthless mother of a war veteran-turned-brainwashed-Communist assassin. She won much critical praise for her chilling performance, and won a third Oscar nomination. In the film, Lansbury's son was played by Laurence Harvey, who was only three years younger than she. Lucille Ball had been considered for the role that went to Lansbury, but didn't get it. A decade later, Ball got Lansbury's title role in the film version of Mame, the role Lansbury created on Broadway. Lansbury has been quoted in an interview with CNN's Larry King as saying that her character in The Manchurian Candidate was her favorite of her many film roles. Such an evil character was unlikely to win Lansbury the Supporting Oscar over little Patty Duke's Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, however, and Duke won the award that year.

On Broadway, Lansbury first received good reviews from her very first musical outing, the short-lived 1964 Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle, which co-starred Lee Remick.

Perhaps the biggest triumph of Lansbury's career was her smash hit success on the New York stage in the title role of Mame , the musical by Jerry Herman, based on the movie Auntie Mame that had originally starred Rosalind Russell. Opening at The Winter Garden Theater on May 24,1966, Mame ran for 1508 performances. Lansbury's long-running portrayal as Herman's version of Mame, opposite Bea Arthur as Vera, earned her a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, her first. Lansbury was the "toast of Broadway" in the Tony award winning musical in which she was nightly singing and dancing to not only the memorable title song, but to such classic hits as: Open a New Window, We Need a Little Christmas, Bosom Buddies, It's Today, and If He Walked Into My Life.

During the 1960s Lansbury's popularity from, and association with, Mame had her much in demand everywhere in the media of the era. Ever the humanitarian, she wisely used her fame during her appearances as an opportunity to benenfit others wherever possible. For example, she did a stint as a guest panelist on the popular Sunday Night CBS-TV quiz show, What's My Line?. During the program, Lansbury made an impassioned plea for viewers to contribute to the 1966 Muscular Dystrophy Association fundraising drive, on behalf of chairman Jerry Lewis, to much applause and fanfare.

Subsequent Tony awards were earned by Lansbury for Dear World (1969) and the first Broadway revival of A Musical Fable (1974). She is a two-time winner of the Sarah Siddons Award (1975 & 1980) for dramatic achievement in Chicago theatre.

Back in the world of films years later after a string of further Tony Awards on Broadway, Lansbury returned to films, playing Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile (1978), a brilliant performance, which years later inspired Johnny Depp's performance of Ichabod Crane in "Sleepy Hollow". Lansbury played Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (1980). She then turned to character voice work in animated films like The Last Unicorn (1982), winning a great deal of praise for her affectionate turn as the singing teapot Mrs. Potts in the Disney hit Beauty and the Beast (1991). She reprised the role as Mrs. Potts in the Square-Enix/Disney video game Kingdom Hearts II in 2006, and also did character work as the Dowager Empress in the less well-received animated film Anastasia in 1997.

Her English music-hall turn as the affection-starved meat-pie entrepreneuse, Mrs. Lovett, in Stephen Sondheim's ballad opera Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street earned her yet another Tony Award in 1979. She has received a Tony nomination for every lead role she has essayed on Broadway, and won each time (total of 4 times), unlike her unlucky record at the Oscars.

As Jessica Fletcher in the long-running television series, Murder, She Wrote (1984 - 1996), she found her biggest success and a worldwide following. It was to be one of the longest running prime time detective drama series in US TV history and made her one of the highest paid actresses in the world and a record as the most nominated lead actress without a win in the prime time Emmy awards (with 12 nominations).

In the early 1990s Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom awarded Angela Lansbury the CBE. She was named a Disney Legend in 1995. She received a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and Kennedy Center Honors in 2000.

Private life

Lansbury was briefly married from 1945-1946 to American actor Richard Cromwell when she was 19 and Cromwell was 35. Cromwell was gay and this first marriage subsequently broke down, but Lansbury and Cromwell remained friends and stayed on good terms even after their divorce. In 1948, Lansbury remarried, to Irish-born actor and businessman Peter Shaw, who had been a former boyfriend of an older actress, Joan Crawford. Shaw was instrumental in guiding and managing Lansbury's career. Until Shaw's death in 2003, Lansbury enjoyed one of the longest of show-business marriages.

Lansbury is the mother of two, stepmother of one, and a grandmother several times over. Her son, Antony, was producer/director of Murder She Wrote and is today a television executive. Lansbury helped her daughter, Deirdre Angela Shaw Battarrais, to beat a drug addiction. For example, at one point during the early 70s, Lansbury and Shaw moved with their children away from the fast-lane lifestyle of Southern California and took up residence for many years at what now is Lansbury's vacation home in County Cork, Ireland. Today, Lansbury's daughter and husband, Battarrais, a chef, are restaurateurs in West L.A.

Lansbury was related by her half-sister Isolde's marriage to the late British actor, Sir Peter Ustinov; the two in-laws appeared together professionally just once in 1978's Death on the Nile. Lansbury is today related—by the marriage of her nephew David Lansbury—to the American actress Ally Sheedy. One of Lansbury's younger twin brothers, Edgar, was a successful theatrical producer, responsible for the debut of Godspell on Broadway in the early 1970s.

She is a longtime resident of Brentwood, California and supports various philanthropic groups. She was the Guest of Honor at the 14th annual Gala and Fundraiser on April 16, 2005 for Women in Recovery, Inc., a Venice, California-based non-profit organization offering a live-in, 12-Step program of rehabilitation for women in need. Past Honorees of this organization have included Jamie Lee Curtis and Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Lansbury had knee replacement surgery on July 14, 2005.*

In 2006 Lansbury purchased a condominium in New York City at a reported cost of $2 million with her sights set on a return to Broadway. Lansbury also enjoys vacation time regularly at her home in County Cork, Ireland.

Filmography

Television Work

Broadway Stage Performances

Awards

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire

Academy Awards

Nominated:

BAFTA Awards

Won:
  • Britannia Award (Lifetime Achievement, 2003)
Nominated:

Emmy Awards

Nominated:
  • Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series (for playing Eleanor Duvall in " Trial by Jury", 2005)
  • Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (The Blackwater Lightship, 2004)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1996)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1995)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1994)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1993)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1992)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1991)
  • Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program ("The 43rd Annual Tony Awards", 1990)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1990)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1989)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1988)
  • Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program ("The 41st Annual Tony Awards", 1987)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1987)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1986)
  • Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program (Sweeney Todd, 1985)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1985)
  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (Little Gloria... Happy at Last, 1983)

Golden Globes

Won: Nominated:
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1995)
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1993)
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1991)
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1989)
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1988)
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1986)
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Miniseries or TV-Movie (A Gift of Love: A Christmas Story, 1983)
  • Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 1972)
  • Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy (Something for Everyone, 1970)

National Board of Review

Tony Awards

Won:

External links

American character actors | American film actors | American stage actors | American television actors | American musical theatre actors | Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominees | Disney Legends | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Disney voice actors | Kingdom Hearts voice actors | Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actors | Law & Order: Trial by Jury actors | Murder, She Wrote actors | National Medal of Arts recipients | Commanders of the Order of the British Empire | Naturalized citizens of the United States | English American actors | Irish-American actors | Londoners | 1925 births | Living people

Angela Lansbury | Angela Lansbury | Angela Lansbury | Angela Lansbury | Angela Lansbury | Angela Lansbury | Angela Lansbury | Angela Lansbury

 

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