Angela Lansbury

  • Birth

    Birth
    Born in London, England with a upper-middle-class family. Father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician and mother was a actress. Has an older half-sister and two younger brothers.
  • Move

    They moved to a house located in the Mill Hill neighborhood of north London.
  • Emigration

    Lansbury and her widowed mother, actress Moyna MacGill emigrated from England to the United States destination Hollywood in order to escape Blitz(an intensive or sudden military attack).
  • Grandfather Death

    George Lansbury, the legendary social reformer, and leader of the British Labour Party for a time during the ’30s. He is a man whom she felt "awed" by and considered "a giant in my youth".
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    Study of acting

    She gained a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio she then also appeared in performances of William Congreve's The Way of the World and Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.
  • First theatrical Job

    Macgill secured work in a Canadian touring production and was joined by Lansbury. There, she gained her first theatrical job as a nightclub act at the Samovar Club, Montreal, singing songs by Noël Coward. At the time she was 16 years old but she claimed to be 19.
  • Period: to

    First Marriage

    At 19 she married actor Richard Cromwell and tied the knot in a small civil ceremony but it turned out that he was heterosexual so she filed for a divorced but they stayed friends.
  • Period: to

    Second Marriage

    She married producer Peter Shaw she then also had two kids with him and a stepson, David, from the producer's first marriage. They where married till her husband died of heart failure.
  • First kid

    First kid
    Shen then had her first kid Anthony Peter. He also went on to have a successful career in entertainment and is now known as an actor and director.
  • Second kid

    Second kid
    After the first kid she had Deirdre Ann. “She finally got married and she and her husband now live in Los Angeles, where they run their own Italian restaurant,”
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    Debut

    Broadway debut in 1957's Hotel Paradiso.
  • Quit Smoking

    Quit Smoking
    She was a chain smoker in early life since 14 year old, but quit smoking in the mid-1960s.
  • First Musical

    First Musical
    Appeared in her first musical, “Anyone Can Whistle,” which had a score by Stephen Sondheim.
  • Broadway musical

    She them moving into musical theatre and started to supplement her cinematic work, Lansbury gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), winning her first Tony Award.
  • Tony Award

    She won a Tony Award as Best Actress for Dear World. She played Countess Aurelia.
  • Award

    She won a Tony Award as Best Actress and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Actress for the play Gypsy. She played Countess Aurelia which she would forever be branded a musical comedy star of the first rank.
  • Mother's death

    Her mood was worsened by her mother's death.
  • Surgey

    She underwent cosmetic surgery on her neck to prevent it from broadening with age.
  • Performance

    Lansbury appeared in 24 performances of a revival of The King and I musical staged at Broadway's Uris Theatre.
  • Award

    She then a Tony Award as Best Actress and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Actress for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She appeared as Nellie Lovett she jumped on the opportunity due to Sondheim's involvement.
  • Theater role

    Lansbury took on the role of an upper middle-class housewife who champions workers' rights in A Little Family Business, a farce set in Baltimore in which her son Anthony also starred. It debuted at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theatre before moving to Broadway's Martin Beck Theatre. It was critically panned and faced protests from California's Japanese-American community for including anti-Japanese slurs.
  • Greatest triumph

    Lansbury’s greatest popular triumph came when she was chosen for the leading role of mystery author Jessica Fletcher in the television series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for 12 seasons.
  • Surgery

    She underwent cosmetic surgery on her neck to prevent it from broadening with age again.
  • Arthritis

    She began to suffer from arthritis in 1990.
  • Surgery

    Lansbury underwent hip replacement surgery.
  • Surgery

    She had a knee replacement surgery.
  • Return

    Lansbury returned to Broadway after a 23-year absence in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally that opened at the Music Box Theatre for a 18-week limited run.
  • Award

    Award
    She also won a Tony Award as Best Actress and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Actress for Blithe Spirit. She played medium Madame Arcati a drawing room comedy.
  • Play

    She performance on Broadway as Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music.
  • Period: to

    Theatre role

    Lansbury appeared as women's rights advocate Sue-Ellen Gamadge in the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.
  • Award

    Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors voted to bestow upon Lansbury an Honorary Academy Award for her lifetime achievements in the industry.
  • Award

    She was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
  • Quotes

    "I was never going to get to play the girl next door. And I was never going to be groomed to be a glamorous movie star. And I sort of realized that. So I had to make peace with myself on that score"- Angela Lansbury 2022
  • Death

    Died in Los Angeles, California, U.S. in her sleep.