The ‘Beauty and the Beast’ star, Angela Lansbury has passed away at age 96. The beloved and devoted actress of 75 years passed away Wednesday in her sleep, just five days before 97th birthday. She was known to bring charisma and poise to the television screen in her roles.
The London-born actress was best known for her role on the mystery television show ‘Murder She Wrote.’
“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 a.m. today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family says in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.
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“In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury,” the statement adds. “She was proceeded in death by her husband of 53 years, Peter Shaw. A private family ceremony will be held at a date to be determined.”
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Born Angela Brigid Lansbury, the future character actress (the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast) and leading lady (Broadway’s eccentric aunt in the musical Mame) was the daughter of Belfast-born actress Moyna MacGill and her second husband, lumber merchant Edgar Lansbury. “A true Irish beauty” is how Lansbury described her mother in a 1993 PEOPLE profile.
What Has Angela Lansbury Done In Her Career
Born in 1925, Lansbury has played in roles ranging from sassy salon singer to sharp-witted investigator. Subsequently, she’d taken the likes of her mother who was also an actress onstage. Wearing many hats, Angela played a princess, a pirate, a witch and a wench, and triumphed as not only a beloved movie star, but also the belle of Broadway and the queen of primetime television.
Even so, in Frank Capra’s State of the Union (1948), the 23-year-old Lansbury portrayed a 45-year-old newspaper magnate embroiled in an affair with Spencer Tracy. In Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949), she played lead actress Hedy Lamarr’s older sister, though she was 11 years younger than Lamarr. Not yet 20 years old, Lansbury garnered her first Oscar nomination for “Best Supporting Actress” in movie, “Gaslight,” in 1944. It’s especially sentimental since it was Landry’s movie gig.
“She’d had no movie experience at all. Yet the moment she stepped on the stage she was an absolute professional,” Director George Cukor remembered. “She had this sullen mouth and assumed the look of a thoroughly ‘bad lot’ girl.”