Angela Lansbury: a life in pictures

From being chaperoned on set of Gaslight at just 17 to winning her fifth Tony for Blithe Spirit age 83

Lansbury earned her first Oscar nomination for her first screen role at the age of 17 in George Cukor’s film version of Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 claustrophobic thriller in which a husband attempts to send his wife mad. Starring alongside Ingrid Bergman, Lansbury played a Cockney maid, Nancy, who was considerably older than she was, meaning the producers had to wait until Lansbury turned 18 before they could shoot her puffing on a cigarette, although in fact Lansbury had been smoking since the age of 14.  The film received mixed reviews but Lansbury’s performance, in which she beautifully toyed with the viewer’s perception of Nancy’s complicity in events, set her on her path to stardom.

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Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
Another best supporting nomination followed for Lansbury with Albert Lewin’s tense slow burn adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic, in which she played the tragic ingenue Sybil Vane, used and abused by Hurd Hatfield’s hedonistic Gray. The film bombed at the box office although it won an Oscar for the black and white cinematography, but it’s worth watching for Lansbury’s gleaming performance, not least since it’s easily superior to that of her leading man. 

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Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo
Lansbury was married to her second husband Peter Shaw, an English actor turned Hollywood agent, for 53 years until his death in 2003 (her previous marriage to the actor Richard Cromwell broke down after he came out as gay). The couple had two children, Anthony and Deirdre (Shaw also had a son from a previous relationship) and were regarded as a rare example of a genuinely perfect Hollywood marriage.

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Widely regarded as her finest performance, Lansbury won her final Oscar nomination as the complex, treacherous Eleanor Iselin in John Frankenheimer’s nightmarish Cold War classic, about a US Korean vet (Laurence Harvey) brainwashed by the Soviets into working to help overthrow the US government. Starring alongside Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh, Lansbury played the vet’s mother, despite being only three years older than Harvey; the film, adapted from Richard Condon’s novel, also skates over her character’s incestuous attraction for her son, made explicit in the novel.

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UNITED ARTISTS / Album
Lansbury found success on stage relatively late with Jerry Herman’s original Broadway musical adaptation of the novel Auntie Mame, playing the eponymous free-thinking socialite at the age of 41. Her success in the role became a pivotal moment in her career and won her the first of three Tonys; it also made her hugely popular with the gay community. “Everything about Mame coincided with every young man’s idea of beauty and glory,” she said later. “I’m very proud of the fact I’m a gay icon.”

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This mind-bending Disney war time fantasia in which Lansbury played Eglantine Price, a fearless, motor bike riding rookie witch who fends off the Nazis with the help of a broomstick, not only kickstarted her long association with Disney but embedded her in the imaginations of every child who saw it. It might not be her most famous role but for many it’s a favourite.

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Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock
The role with which Lansbury is indelibly associated: the bicycling TV sleuth Jessica Fletcher who thanks to her small town every day charm became a much loved fixture in living rooms on both sides of the Atlantic. The CBS series was a family affair – son Anthony directed many episodes while her husband Peter Shaw produced it from 1987 onwards. “What appealed to me about Jessica Fletcher,” Lansbury later said, “is that I could do what I do best and have little chance to play – a sincere down to earth woman”.

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CBS Archive via Getty Images
Lansbury and Shaw moved from Los Angeles to her ancestral home of Cork in 1971 mainly to help their two children, Anthony (pictured right in 1979) and Deirdre, who had both become embroiled in the California hard drugs scene. Both children quickly became clean and Lansbury credited the move with saving their life. Anthony became an actor and director with acting credits including The Spy Who Loved Me while Deirdre moved into the Los Angeles restaurant business with her husband. 

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Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
No greater proof of Lansbury’s extraordinary versatility can be found than in this animated Disney classic in which she voiced a porcelain teapot called Mrs Potts. She also won acclaim for her performance in the film of the title track, written by Howard Ashton and Alan Menkel, and which won multiple awards.

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“Nanny McPhee pulled me out of the abyss,” said Lansbury of Emma Thompson’s 2005 film adaptation of the Nurse Matilda books, in which she played the formidable Great Aunt Adelaide, her first big role following the death of her husband in 2003. Not that Thompson ever thought she’d ensnare Lansbury for Adelaide: in 2013 she said that imagining Lansbury might star in the film felt like “asking for a slice of the moon to be delivered”.

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Capital Pictures
It was a case of three times the bridesmaid never the bride when it came to Lansbury and Oscars, something the Academy rectified with this honorary Oscar. During the ceremony Geoffrey Rush summed up the love in the room, describing her as “the definition of range”.

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Fred Prouser / Reuters
Lansbury won a Tony for her show-stealing performance as the deliciously batty medium Madame Arcati on Broadway in 2009, and reunited with director Michael Blakemore for this hit West End revival – which also marked a rare return to her home city. The show was a huge success, with The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer saying of Lansbury: “Her voice swoops and soars with superb grandeur and her extraordinary dance routine, in which she seems physically to vibrate as she goes into a trance, is a wonder to behold.”  

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Alastair Muir
In one of her final films, Lansbury had a cameo as a kind and magical Balloon Lady, (mirroring the original film’s Bird Lady) after Julie Andrews turned down the role for fear of upstaging Emily Blunt. In fact, Lansbury had been in the running for the role of Mary Poppins in the original film.

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Source:
Jay Maidment