Los Angeles: Three-time Oscar nominee Angela Lansbury, who won international acclaim as the star of the US TV crime series “Murder, She Wrote”, has died. She was 96.
She had a career spanning eight decades, across film, theatre and television, the BBC reported.
Born in 1925, she was one of the last surviving stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Dame Angela died in her sleep just five days before her 97th birthday, her family said in a statement.
“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles,” the family said.
Born in London, Dame Angela later moved to New York and attended the Feagin School of Dramatic Art. She was noticed by a Hollywood executive at a party in 1942, and given her first role as a maid in the 1944 film Gaslight.
Her subsequent career took her from Broadway to Hollywood, with success on the big and small screen.
Tributes following her death lauded her as a “legend” of Hollywood.
Actor Josh Gad wrote on Twitter: “It is rare that one person can touch multiple generations, creating a breadth of work that defines decade after decade. Angela Lansbury was that artist.”
Fellow actor Harvey Fierstein said that Dame Angela was “everything”.
Actress Mia Farrow, who starred in the 1978 film “Death on the Nile” alongside Dame Angela, wrote that it was “an honour” to have worked with her.
Many tributes mentioned Dame Angela’s work to raise awareness and money for Aids in the 1980s and 90s, fronting a TV information campaign and headlining fundraising events.
