Angela

This dependable, saucer-eyed, often flamboyant character actress and occasional lead of features became a Broadway musical star in middle age and enjoyed a hit TV series in her golden years. Angela Lansbury's early screen career was marked by a string of unsympathetic portraits, beginning with her acclaimed debut as the scheming, sexually provocative maid in the Gothic thriller, "Gaslight" (1944), for which she received as Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress at age 19. She duplicated that achievement the following year with a lovely performance as the kindly heroine involved with the un-aging anti-hero of another memorable piece of Grand Guignol, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945). Stationed at MGM for a number of years thereafter, Lansbury returned to Gothic territory in the unnerving "Kind Lady" (1951), but also played manipulative in Frank Capra's modern day political comedy-drama "State of the Union" (1948), and was naughty in George Sidney's charming period musical "The Harvey Girls" (1946). Lansbury also showed a flair for farce in the Danny Kaye vehicle "The Court Jester" (1956) and did fairly well in the atypical Western "A Lawless Street" (1955), as Randolph Scott's love interest. Although she continued to perform well in off-beat character roles in "The Long Hot Summer" (1958) and other films, Lansbury also made more routine films as the 1950s progressed. Unafraid to play roles older than her years, however, Lansbury rebounded magnificently as Laurence Harvey's monstrous mother in "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962), winning a third Oscar nomination. (She was only three years older than Harvey at the time of filming.)Although she provided a likably relaxed and probably historically inaccurate portrayal of Jean Harlow's mother in the trashy but watchable biopic "Harlow" (1965), Lansbury soon turned her energies to the musical stage, where she would do some her most important work over the next two decades. Having made her Broadway debut in 1957 and appeared in her first musical ("Anyone Can Whistle") in 1964, Lansbury took off as the zestful, eccentric Mame Dennis in Jerry Herman's "Mame" (1966). She won her second Tony in Herman's "Dear World" (1969), a musical version of "The Madwoman of Chaillot". Her third Tony was for the Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim musical "Gypsy" (1975), in which she boldly stepped into Ethel Merman's shoes as Mama Rose, the harsh, ambitious stage mother of Gypsy Rose Lee, and she received number four as the murderous Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim's deliciously ghoulish "Sweeney Todd" (1979).Lansbury's intermittent screen work during this time was in a very similar vein, as she played seriocomic eccentrics. She brought a suitably cartoonish charm to her amateur witch in Disney's "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971), and her other big screen roles included a hilarious countess in the cult film "Something for Everyone" (1970), the outlandish gorgon who first solves the murder in "Death on the Nile" (1979) and another Agatha Christie sleuth, Miss Marple, in "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980). On televison, Lansbury appeared again as Mrs. Lovett in a TV version of "Sweeney Todd" (1982) and as matriarch Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in the miniseries "Little Gloria... Happy at Last" (1982), and she showed a penchant for holiday fare with roles in "The Story of the First Christmas Snow" (1975) and "The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story" (1983).Perfectly cast due to her roles as Agatha Christie heroines, Lansbury garnered what has almost certainly been her widest audience to date as the warm and spunky mystery writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the long-running CBS ratings favorite, "Murder, She Wrote", (1984-96). As the show moved closer to a decade on the air, Lansbury was coaxed into remaining on the series by being offered the chance to executive produce it as well. Long after the series folded, Lansbury would reprise the beloved character for a series of TV movies.The actress also gained kid video immortality in the early 90s as the voice of kindly tea kettle Mrs. Potts, who sings the sweet, Oscar-winning title song, in the acclaimed Disney animated blockbuster, "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). She reprised the role for the direct-to-video sequel "Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas" (1997), and would be tapped by 20th Century Fox to voice Dowager Empress Marie for its animated feature "Anastasia" (1997). Lansbury also kept busy with a steady slate of telepics, including "Rage of Angels: The Story Continues" (1986), "Shootdown (1988), "The Shell Seekers" (1989), "The Love She Sought" (1990), "Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris" (1992), "Mrs. Santa Claus" (1996), "The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax" (1999) and "The Blackwater Lightship" (2004).Lansbury remained a frequent and vibrant television personality, appearing in, hosting and/or narrating several Disney specials and videos, as an interview subject on many retrospectives on Hollywood and Broadway history, and as the host of the 1999 Tony Awards. The actress would occasionally make brief forays back into series television via guest shots on such series as "Touched by an Angel" in 2002, and her character of Eleanor Duvall would appear on two episodes of "Law & Order: Trial by Jury" and an episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" in 2005.Along with her four Oscar nominations and four Tony Award wins, Lansbury would amass a staggering 14 Emmy nominations, three Golden Globe wins out of 15 nominations and received a 2000 Kennedy Center Honor for her lifetime achievement in the arts. background-position:left;" a