This article was originally written for the Star of the Month programming in the TCM Now Playing newsletter in October 2025.
Commemorating what would have been her centennial birthday on October 15th, all this month, TCM salutes the internationally renowned and beloved actress of screen and stage, Angela Lansbury. With a career spanning almost eight decades, her smooth delivery, polished appearance and ability to adapt to roles ranging from maternal to devious have endeared and enthralled audiences. Amongst the offerings presented across Lansbury’s body of work, you can catch a psychological and espionage-laced thriller, as well as a nail-biting and heartbreaking drama.
Born Angela Brigid Lansbury on October 16, 1925, in London, she was the eldest of three children of British politician Edgar Lansbury (who had been both a member of the Labour and Communist Parties) and Irish actress Moyna MacGill. Residing in the Poplar neighborhood of London for the early part of her life (her father having served as its mayor in the 1920s), the family would relocate to another area of the city. Lansbury found her love of performing soon after, which included learning the piano. She would also study at London’s Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art (which would eventually be incorporated into the University of London Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), where her stage work began with their production of “Mary of Scotland.” Lansbury played a lady-in-waiting to Mary, Queen of Scots.
The family moved to the United States in the early 1940s, following Edgar Lansbury’s death and fear of the impending Blitz in England. Heading to New York, Angela would move on to study at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art after obtaining a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing to do so. Eventually, relocating to the Greenwich Village neighborhood, she would go on the road with MacGill throughout Canada, scoring a paying gig singing in Montreal’s Samovar Club. A cross-country move was in the cards for the family once again, this time to Los Angeles, with MacGill’s goal of reigniting her own film career. Thanks to an introduction to screenwriter John Van Druten through MacGill, Lansbury would score her first film role in the script he recently completed, that of a maid pulled into a diabolical plot.
Based on the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play “Gas Light” and a remake of the 1940 British film adaptation, Gaslight (1944) follows a woman (Ingrid Bergman) trying to wrap her head around the events surrounding her aunt’s murder, while her mind’s recall is constantly questioned by her newlywed husband (Charles Boyer). As maid (and romantic dupe) Nancy Oliver, Lansbury’s first film role may have been rather small, but the role she plays in the deep, devious handling of the leading lady proves that no one was safe from the terrible tactics of such an evil man. The term “gaslighting” would permanently enter our vernacular to describe a deliberate psychological manipulation to convince someone of their diminishing mental faculties. Lansbury earned a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for the role, and the film won two Oscars (Best Actress for Bergman and Best Art Direction, Black-and-White).
Manipulation and evil can come in all sorts of packages, and as Eleanor Shaw Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Lansbury presents a woman who is willing to put her own child’s life and mind in jeopardy to satisfy her own selfishness and agenda. Adapted from the 1959 novel of the same name by Richard Condon, the film tells the story of veteran Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), who returns from his captivity after a brainwashing session with a communist regime and is pulled into an assassination plot to take down the standing U.S. president to cause complete political upheaval. Mrs. Iselin (as the character is often referred to) uses, cajoles, dominates and plays puppeteer over her own son in order to boost her husband’s political career, with an icy countenance that barely masks her true nature. Lansbury would earn a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe win the following year.
In one of her earlier films, 1949’s The Red Danube, Lansbury portrays no-nonsense British service commander Audrey Quail, who serves as the right-hand woman and cool, clear head to Colonel Nicobar (Walter Pidgeon) and his other aides (Peter Lawford, Melville Cooper) while stationed in post-World War II Austria. While nursing an unrequited love for one of them, she must come to the aid of the rest of her group as Soviet soldiers are attempting to return their citizens to Russia. Though the role was supporting and rather minor, her stoicism and toughness were certainly evident.
Adapted from the 1937 Agatha Christie novel, Death on the Nile (1978) features Peter Ustinov as emphatic Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot. As a newlywed heiress dodges the woman whose husband she stole, Poirot must rifle through a madcap cast of characters to find the true culprit behind several murders. This star-studded ensemble includes Mia Farrow, Bette Davis, Olivia Hussey, David Niven, Jane Birkin, George Kennedy, Simon MacCorkindale, Lois Chiles and Maggie Smith; with Lansbury’s portrayal of the somewhat eccentric, delightfully flamboyant (and often slightly intoxicated) Salome Otterbourne stealing the show. Both Lansbury and Smith would be nominated for a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA for the film.
Her career kept propelling forward, and by the 1980s, it would move in a different direction in 1984 when Lansbury stepped into the role of crime and mystery writer-come-amateur-sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the primetime television hit “Murder, She Wrote.” Expanding her oeuvre and acquiring a brand-new fanbase, the show ran from 1984 to 1996, earning multiple Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe awards and nominations, including 12 Emmy nominations for Lansbury as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series throughout the show’s run, as well as a 1992 Golden Globe win for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series-Drama. The show continues to remain popular on streaming networks and nostalgia channels as more and more fans have discovered it.
Following her first foray into Disney films with 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Lansbury would once again return to the fold, voicing the motherly teapot Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast (1991). Her soft, melodic singing voice lent extra sweetness to this adaptation of the French fairy tale. Her personal life would thrive, with marriages to actor Richard Cromwell and actor-producer Peter Shaw. She and Shaw were married from 1949 until his death in 2003, and they shared two children.
Though never winning a competitive Academy Award, she would receive an Honorary Oscar in 2014. For her countless performances in the theater, she was nominated for a total of seven Tony Awards, winning five, including for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance in the original Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” in 1979. She also received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.
Her final major film role would be a cameo appearance in the 2022 mystery Glass Onion. She would ultimately pass away at the age of 96 in October 2022. While many of us can list not just one, but a multitude of performances that have touched us, it was her sheer talent, star quality, drive and persistence that have made her one of the most respected actors in entertainment history. Whether on the stage, small or large screens, Angela Lansbury’s impressive resume, devotion to perfection and passion for her craft have earned her a rightful place in our hearts.
