Actress Angela Lansbury, known for her role in the series
Murder Wrote
, died Tuesday at the age of 96, her family said in a statement.
"Angela Lansbury's children are saddened to announce that her mother passed away peacefully in her sleep at her home in Los Angeles at 1:30 a.m. local time, just five days shy of her 97th birthday."
Actress Angela Brigid Lansbury was born in London on October 16, 1925. She was the daughter of actress Moyna MacGill and granddaughter of George Lansbury, leader of the Labor Party between 1932 and 1935. Orphaned at the age of nine, she lived for some time In Ireland.
In 1940, during World War II, her mother emigrated to the United States with Lansbury and two other twin brothers.
They settled in New York and she Angela began taking drama classes at Lucy Fagan's school after getting a scholarship.
At the age of 16 and having completed these studies, she went to live with her mother in Los Angeles.
At the age of 19, in 1944, Lansbury participated in his first film,
Dying Light
, directed by George Cukor.
She was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress.
A year later she was nominated again in the same category for her role in
Albert Lewin's
The Picture of Dorian Gray .
Her career continued with performances that demonstrated her versatility in adapting equally to the roles of virtuous and evil women.
The third Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress was for
John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate in 1962
.
Although he showed his great acting skills in the cinema, it was on Broadway where he reached the peak of his professional career.
Her passage through the theatrical scene began in 1957, with
Hotel Paradiso
.
She starred in
A Taste of Honey
in the musical
Anyone Can Whistle
.
She reached her peak with the 1966 musical
Mame
, for which she won a Tony Award.
She was established with four other Tonys in 1969 for
Dear World
, in 1975 for
Gypsy
, in 1979 for
Sweeney Todd
and in 2009 for
Blithe Spirit
.
In the 1970s, her popularity reached family audiences with her starring role in the Disney classic
The Rookie Witch .
.
Angela Lansbury's biggest and most popular success was her role as crime novelist Jessica Fletcher on the television series Murder,
She Wrote
.
It began airing in 1984 and lasted for 12 seasons, although there were later appearances of the character played by Lansbury in television specials and movies.
In 2017, she participated in the three-episode miniseries
Little Women
.
She has voiced animated characters in movies like Beauty and the Beast and Anastasia.
In 2013 he was awarded an honorary Oscar for his entire career.
Angela Lansbury married actor Richard Cromwell at the age of 19, who left her a few months later and later admitted that he was homosexual.
In 1949 she married actor Peter Shaw and they had two children.
She died in 2003. In 2017, she was widely criticized for statements about the harassment of women, which she said were taken out of context, in which she suggested that the fact that women try to be more attractive puts them at risk of sexual harassment.
She denied that she justified her harassment with her words and she was devastated by the attacks she received.