British actress Angela Lansbury, star of the iconic television series Murder, She Wrote (It has written a crime, in Spain) and films such as Dying Light or The Portrait of Dorian Gray, died this Tuesday at the age of 96 in Los Angeles (USA). His death, at dawn, occurred when only missing five days to his 97th birthday, recalled his family in a statement released by People magazine. Lansbury, who became a familiar face on the small screen for playing the novelist Jessica Fletch in A Murder Has Been Wrote (1984-1996), he was nominated up to three times an Oscar for supporting roles in the aforementioned Dying Light (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), and in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and achieved a honorary statuette in 2013, awarded by the Hollywood Academy. Born in London in 1925, she fled with her mother from World War II and moved to New York in 1940, where after studying acting, she achieved various roles on Broadway until winning her first Tony Award in 1996 for the musical Mame. She then she would take another four more, in addition to an honorary one in 2022.
The difficult jump to the cinema
Before touching the glory on Broadway, he signed for the MGM studios in Hollywood to be part of the cast of eleven films, although always in secondary roles, after which her contract was not renewed. From her time in the mecca of cinema, the actress later recalled that the agreement imposed numerous limitations and never had power of decision when it comes to accepting or rejecting jobs. Already in the seventies, Lansbury returned to the United Kingdom and participated in plays until, after playing Salomé Otterbourne in the film death on the nile (1978), CBS signed her in 1984 to star in Murder Wrote.
Twelve years solving crimes
The series, which was broadcast for 12 consecutive years, was a international success and raised the popularity of Lansbury, whom most viewers remember as the writer and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher, a character who blended perfectly the taste for costumbrism and adrenaline of the crimes he investigated. With this role, Lansbury continued to increase his honors until he received 18 nominations to the Emmy awards, although the real achievement of Murder has been written was to endure over time in successive decades. Even today, the series is part of the programming grids of television channels around the world. “We found our audience and they were faithful to the end,” explained in 1998, just as the series said goodbye, during an interview at the Emmy Awards in which he also highlighted the triumph that a female character star in a prime-time series. The respect American audiences felt for the British actress led to her being awarded the Arts Medal at the Kennedy Center Honor.
An extensive career
Among other popular work, Lansbury played the sensitive Mrs. Pott in the animated version of Beauty and the Beast (1991) and joined Disney titles such as Anastasia (1997) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). During his extensive acting career he participated in uin thirty films, fourteen plays and two television series. In the family, he had a long marriage to fellow actor Peter Shaw, from 1949 until he died in 2003, and gave birth to three children. Although she settled in California, she continued to be linked to the United Kingdom, since in 2014 Queen Elizabeth II —with whom she shared the year of birth— granted her the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) during a ceremony at Windsor Castle.“I am proud to be recognized in the country where I was born, and meeting the queen under these circumstances is a lovely and special occasion,” he said then.