Already with her first film roles in the 1940s, Angela Lansbury was able to celebrate great success. After a career spanning nearly 80 years on the big screen, the small screen, and the theater stage, the actress has now passed away in her sleep at her Los Angeles home., as US industry magazines report following a report from Lansbury’s three children. She would have turned 97 on Sunday.
The British actress had her first appearances as an actress in nightclubs and cabarets in North America, where her family had emigrated during World War II. But it wasn’t long before Lansbury was discovered for the cinema.
At just 17, she landed the role of the sassy girl Nancy opposite Ingrid Bergman in the thriller The House of Lady Alquist — and was promptly nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1945. Just a year later, she was nominated for second. nominated in the same category for her role in the Oscar Wilde adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Lansbury still holds the record for the youngest actress to receive two Oscar nominations.
Although it was not quite able to maintain this unprecedented high level in the years that followed, it was still in high demand. After several years in smaller films, she relaunched her career with the political thriller “Ambassador of Fear” in 1962, which also featured her commitment to the 1970s classic “The Daring Witch in Her Flying Bed.” and “Death on the Nile”. Fear Ambassadors also earned her an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actress. Here too she could not get the coveted trophy, However, in 2014 Lansbury was awarded an Oscar for her lifetime achievement.
But Angela Lansbury was also a regular guest at other renowned award ceremonies. The actress, who is also very active on Broadway with starring roles in such popular musicals as “Mame”, “Gypsy” and “Sweeney Todd”, has been awarded six Tony Awards over the course of her career and ultimately an honorary Tony for her life’s work.
She is also one of the actresses with the most Golden Globe trophies with a total of six awards (topped only by Meryl Streep with seven wins). She received four of the prizes for this her internationally best-known role, that of the good-hearted crime writer and shrewd amateur investigator Jessica Fletcher in the series hit “Mord ist ihr Hobby”which had twelve seasons with more than 260 episodes between 1984 and 1996 and also became an absolute cult in Germany.
Angela Lansbury also left a lasting impression with a few speaking roles, most notably in the original version of the Disney masterpiece Beauty and the Beast as Madame Pottine, who also performs the Oscar-winning theme song in the film. Lansbury was less on camera after the end of “Murder Is Her Hobby”, but she still enriched isolated family comedies like “An Enchanting Nanny” and “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” with her endearing presence. One of her last film roles came in 2018 as Balloon Lady in the Disney classic sequel Mary Poppins Returns.