angela lansbury

from the trailer for The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) Born Angela Brigid Lansbury

16 October 1925 (1925-10-16) (age 83)

London, England, UK Occupation Actress/Singer Years active 1944 – present Spouse(s) Richard Cromwell (1945-1946)

Peter Shaw (1949-2003)

Angela Brigid Lansbury, CBE (born October 16, 1925) is a British actress and singer whose career has spanned seven decades. Her first film appearance was in Gaslight (1944), for which she received an Academy Award nomination, and she expanded her repertoire to Broadway and television in the 1950s. Highly respected for her versatility, Lansbury has won four Tony Awards and six Golden Globes, and has been nominated for eighteen Emmys.

Her more popular films include The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and Beauty and the Beast (1991) and she was successful in such Broadway musicals as Gypsy, Mame and Sweeney Todd. Lansbury is more recently known for her role as mystery writer Jessica Fletcher on the American television series Murder, She Wrote, in which she starred from 1984 until 1996. Contents [hide] 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Theatre 2.2 Film and television 2.3 Honors 3 Personal life 4 Work 4.1 Filmography 4.2 Theatre 4.3 Television films 5 Awards and nominations 5.1 Academy Awards 5.2 CableACE Awards 5.3 BAFTA Awards 5.4 Drama Desk Awards 5.5 Emmy Awards 5.6 Golden Globes 5.7 Hasty Pudding Theatricals 5.8 National Board of Review 5.9 Screen Actors Guild Awards 5.10 Television Critics Association Awards 5.11 Tony Awards 6 See also 7 References 8 Notes 9 External links //

Early life

Born in Poplar, London, England,[1] Lansbury was the daughter of Belfast-born actress Moyna MacGill and Edgar Lansbury, a prominent businessman, and the granddaughter of the former Labour Party leader George Lansbury. She is a cousin of the late English animator and puppeteer Oliver Postgate (another grandchild of George Lansbury). Her cousin, the academic Coral Lansbury, is the mother of the Australian federal Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull. Her earliest theatrical influences were the teenaged coloratura Deanna Durbin, screen star Irene Dunne, and Lansbury's mother, who encouraged her daughter's ambition by taking her to plays at the Old Vic and removing her from South Hampstead High School for Girls in order to enrol her in the Ritman School of Dancing and later the Webber-Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art (later the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art).

Following her father's death from stomach cancer, her mother became involved with a Scotsman named Leckie Forbes, and the two merged their families under one roof in Hampstead. A former colonel with the British Army in India, Forbes proved to be a jealous and suspicious tyrant who ruled the household with an iron hand. Just prior to the German bombing campaign of London, Lansbury's mother was presented with the opportunity to take her children to North America, and under cover of