ACTOR
Angela Lansbury
- Known for
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Murder, She Wrote (1984), The Company of Wolves (1984), The Mirror Crack'd (1980)
75 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
Angela Lansbury is an actor best known for Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Murder, She Wrote and The Company of Wolves.
All facts (75)
- #001
In an interview, Lansbury once named Hedy Lamarr as her best co-star, describing her as sweet, loving, kind and considerate to everyone on the film set, cast or crew.
- #002
She was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one in the Motion Pictures category at 6623 Hollywood Boulevard, and one for Television at 6259 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
- #003
She, her mother Moyna MacGill and her younger twin brothers (Edgar Lansbury and Bruce Lansbury) were among the last family members on the ship evacuated from London to the United States during the Blitz.
- #004
She did not work on the final day of production on the last episode of Murder, She Wrote (1984) because there were too many emotions.
- #005
She was one of the speakers at Jerry Orbach's memorial service.
- #006
She created the role of Mame Dennis in Jerry Herman's "Mame." When Jack L. Warner decided to make the film, he refused to cast Angela Lansbury because she was not a big enough star (despite intense pressure from Jerry Herman). He chose Lucille Ball instead. The film was a flop, and to this day Angela Lansbury never forgave Warner.
- #007
In 1951, Angela Lansbury became a naturalized United States citizen.
- #008
She was among the special guests invited to the Grand Opening of the first Disney park in Europe (Disneyland Resort Paris, formerly EuroDisney Resort), where she also contributed her handprints.
- #009
She was a longtime friend of the late Bob Hope and gave a speech at his memorial service on August 27, 2003. She and Hope appeared on Bob Hope: The First 90 Years (1993), and Bob Hope sang with her.
- #010
She was offered the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), but turned it down because she did not think she could take on the role.
- #011
After a 40-year absence, she made a triumphant return to London's West End stage as the Tony-winning Madame Arcati in Sir Noël Coward's 'Blithe Spirit.' At the age of 89, in 2015, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
- #012
As of February 2010, she held the record as the youngest actor to receive two Oscar nominations (by age 20). She was tied with Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson and Alan Alda for the most Golden Globe Award wins: six, until Streep's seventh win on January 17, 2010.
- #013
Although she was only 10 years older than Elvis Presley, she played Elvis Presley's mother in Blue Hawaii (1961).
- #014
2006: To date she has hosted (or co-hosted) the Tony Awards television broadcast more times than any other individual: (1968, 1971, 1987, 1988 and 1989).
- #015
July 21, 2000: She withdrew from the proposed Broadway musical "The Visit" because of her husband's poor health and upcoming heart surgery.
- #016
Her role as Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) ranked 91st on Premiere Magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. The same performance ranked 21st on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list.
- #017
Angela Lansbury died on October 11, 2022, at the age of 96. Four months before her death, in June 2022, she received a special Lifetime Achievement award at the 75th Tony Awards, but was unable to accept it in person.
- #018
Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur became very close friends after appearing together in the Broadway version of "Mame."
- #019
Angela Lansbury won four Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical and is best known for her work in musicals, yet her singing voice was dubbed in the romantic musical The Harvey Girls (1946).
- #020
Angela Lansbury held British, United States and Irish citizenship, acquired in that chronological order.
- #021
Angela Lansbury had performed at the annual public Christmas concerts of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.
- #022
The recently published authorized biography "Balancing Act" states that her first husband, Richard Cromwell, was gay, a fact she did not learn until after their separation.
- #023
Wearing only conventional makeup (that is, not made up in the studio to look "old"), Angela Lansbury was a supremely chilling and memorable (and convincing!) player as Laurence Harvey's manipulative mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), even though in real life she was nearly three years older than Harvey.
- #024
In November 2013, it was announced that NBC would reboot Murder, She Wrote (1984) with Octavia Spencer in the role of Jessica Fletcher. Lansbury was unhappy with the idea and was relieved when, in January 2014, the network decided not to proceed with the project.
- #025
In 2000, Angela Lansbury was honored with the John F. Kennedy Center Honor for her services to the arts.
- #026
Angela Lansbury is the aunt of David Lansbury, who was married to Ally Sheedy from 1992 to 2008.
- #027
Along with Norman Lloyd, William Daniels, Christopher Lee, Dick Van Dyke, Ernest Borgnine, Mickey Rooney, Estelle Parsons, Betty White, Edward Asner, Adam West, Marla Gibbs, William Shatner, Larry Hagman, Florence Henderson, Shirley Jones, Hal Linden, Connie Sawyer and Alan Alda, Lansbury is one of the few actors in Hollywood who lived into their 80s and/or 90s without retiring from acting or stopping work.
- #028
Angela Lansbury was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama. She was promoted to DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2014 Queen's New Year Honours for her services to drama and to charity and philanthropy. She was invested by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at a ceremony at Windsor Castle on 15 April 2014.
- #029
Angela Lansbury never retired from acting.
- #030
Angela Lansbury always stayed in character on Murder, She Wrote (1984).
- #031
Angela Lansbury is the only actor to appear in all 264 episodes of Murder, She Wrote (1984).
- #032
Over her long life, Angela Lansbury had 10 hobbies: housework, spending time with her family, reading, dancing, horseback riding, playing tennis, cooking, playing the piano, gardening and writing letters.
- #033
Angela Lansbury was nominated 12 times for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote (1984), and four more times before, during and after the series, but never won. As of 2018, Lansbury holds the record among performers for the most Emmy nominations without a single win, with 18 unsuccessful nominations.
- #034
Although her marriage to Richard Cromwell did not last long, Angela Lansbury remained close friends with him until his death in 1960.
- #035
Angela Lansbury trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England, whose alumni include Terence Stamp, Elizabeth Knowelden, Hugh Bonneville, Rupert Friend, Antony Sher, Daniel Hunt, Matthew Goode, Sue Johnston, Minnie Driver and Julian Fellowes.
- #036
Angela Lansbury was one of the final guest stars of the sitcom Newhart (1982).
- #037
Angela Lansbury was a member of St. David's Anglican Church in North Hollywood, California.
- #038
Through her marriage to her second husband, Peter Shaw, Lansbury gave birth to her first child, son Anthony Pullen Shaw, on 7 January 1952, when she was 26, and to her second child, daughter Deirdre Angela Shaw, on 26 April 1953, when she was 27. She gave birth to both children naturally, delivering her son at her home in Malibu and her daughter Deirdre at a hospital in Santa Monica. Lansbury is the grandmother of Ian Lansbury (through her son).
- #039
Lansbury reunited with her Death on the Nile (1978) co-star Olivia Hussey seven years after the film in the Murder, She Wrote (1984) episode Sing a Song of Murder (1985). Olivia played Rosalie Otterbourne, the daughter of Lansbury's character Salome Otterbourne.
- #040
At 96 years, 11 months and 25 days, Lansbury is the longest-lived actress to have portrayed Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in any medium [The Mirror Crack'd (1980)].
- #041
Lansbury was the granddaughter of George Lansbury, leader of the British Labour Party in the 1930s and therefore Leader of the Opposition in Parliament; her father was the prominent merchant and politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury. Her mother was the Belfast-born actress Moyna MacGill, who appeared with her in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and Kind Lady (1951). Lansbury and her twin siblings (Edgar Lansbury and Bruce Lansbury), who became film and television producers, are of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She was the step-sister of Isolde Denham, her mother's daughter from her first marriage to Reginald Denham. Isolde was married to Peter Ustinov, with whom she had a daughter, Lansbury's niece Tamara Ustinov.
- #042
She is one of three performers to have won six Tony Awards. Audra McDonald won all six of her awards competitively, while Angela and Julie Harris each won five competitively and a sixth as Lifetime Achievement Award recipients (Angela received her award posthumously at the 75th Tony Awards in 2022).
- #043
As of 2022, Angela holds the record for hosting the most Tony Awards ceremonies. Angela hosted five times: 1968, 1971, 1987, 1988 and 1989. Neil Patrick Harris and Hugh Jackman have each hosted four times.
- #044
Angela Lansbury reprised the role of Mrs. Pollifax in the 1999 television film. The role had originally been played in the film by Rosalind Russell. She also reprised Miss Russell's starring role from Auntie Mame (1958) in the original Broadway cast of the musical "Mame".
- #045
In 1939 she graduated from South Hampstead High School in Hampstead, Northwest, London, England, when she was only 13 years old.
- #046
On 25 November 1975, Lansbury's mother, Moyna MacGill, died of cancer at the age of 79.
- #047
Lansbury reunited with Glynis Johns, her co-star from The Court Jester (1955), 29 years after the film in the Murder, She Wrote (1984) episode Sing a Song of Murder (1985).
- #048
Together with her second husband, Peter Shaw, she founded Corymore Productions in 1987. In the ninth season of Murder, She Wrote (1984), she became the series' executive producer.
- #049
She was offered several options for both series: one was a Norman Lear comedy opposite Charles Durning, and the other was a detective series written by co-creators William Link and Richard Levinson. Because she could not do both, she chose to make Murder, She Wrote (1984) even though her agents advised her to accept the sitcom, and she was glad she did. She stayed with the series for 12 years.
- #050
She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (New York City) in 2007 for her work in "Deuce".
- #051
In New York City she was awarded the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2009 for her performance in "Blithe Spirit" on Broadway.
- #052
Before becoming a successful actress, she worked with her mother (Moyna MacGill), where she got her first theatre job as a nightclub act at the Samovar Club in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
- #053
She was cremated after her family held a private funeral service for her in a chapel at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The Broadway League in New York City and the West End theatre in London held memorial tributes in her honour on 15 October 2022.
- #054
In the late 1940s, MGM planned to cast her as the female lead opposite Clark Gable in a film titled "Angel's Flight", but the project never came to fruition because Gable disliked the story, and the studio therefore shelved the entire project.
- #055
She was a cousin of Oliver Postgate, the producer and voice behind classic BBC series such as The Clangers (1969) and Ivor the Engine (1976).
- #056
Angela Lansbury began her career in 1942 as a contract player at MGM.
- #057
J. Arthur Rank offered her The Blue Lagoon (1949) and The Red Shoes (1948), but MGM would not loan her out to Rank to make either project.
- #058
She was considered for the role of Claudia Casswell in All About Eve (1950).
- #059
Lansbury met her second husband, Peter Shaw, who was seven years her senior, while she was under contract to MGM; at the time he was a studio executive and agent, and he took on the role of her manager. The two were married for 54 years, from 1949 until his death in 2003.
- #060
Her first grandchild was born in 2017.
- #061
Her father, Edgar Isaac Lansbury, was a politician, an English timber merchant, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and a former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar, and her mother, Moyna MacGill (also known as Charlotte Lillian McIldowie), was a popular Irish actress who appeared regularly on the West End stage and also in many films.
- #062
She was offered roles in Tea with Mussolini (1999) and David Copperfield (2000) but turned them down because of her husband's health. For the same reason she also withdrew from the 2001 Broadway musical The Visit.
- #063
She died five days before her 97th birthday.
- #064
In Murder, She Wrote (1984) her character was of Irish origin, and in real life Lansbury was of Irish descent on her mother's side.
- #065
Pauline Kael called her a "picture redeemer" for the unwavering quality of her performances in films of varying quality.
- #066
On 14 July 2005 she underwent knee replacement surgery.
- #067
She was the former stepmother of Catherine Bach.
- #068
She appeared in two films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Gaslight (1944) and Beauty and the Beast (1991).
- #069
In the early 1930s, when Lansbury was only 4 years old and after her twin brothers arrived, the whole family moved from Poplar in East London to a house in Mill Hill in North London, and they spent weekends at a rural farm in Berrick Salome near Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
- #070
If Winter Comes (1947), The Purple Mask (1955) and The Cool of the Day (1963) rank among the worst films she ever made.
- #071
After Lansbury left New York City with her family at the age of 16, they moved to Los Angeles, California, in Laurel Canyon, where she pursued an acting career that would last 80 years until her death in 2022.
- #072
From 1989 to 1992 she was a popular spokesperson for Bufferin Aspirin Tablets.
- #073
She was invited to make a guest voice cameo in the "The Simpsons" episode "Mr. Plow" (Season 4, episode 9) but declined, so the animators instead showed feet walking on hot coals with Yeardley Smith's low, groaning voice.
- #074
In honour of her 100th birthday, she was chosen as Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month in October 2025.
- #075
She was born on the same date as Michael Conrad (known for Hill Street Blues (1981)).
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