‘Murder She Wrote’ star, Angela Lansbury, dies at 96

Actress Angela Lansbury, who became popular through her role as a writer-detective in “Murder She Wrote,” has died. She died at the age of 96.

The British-born star, who was famous as one of television’s most memorable characters, was also a highly successful and decorated stage and film actress.

A widely quoted statement in the US said: “The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles… just five days shy of her 97th birthday.”

Tributes came from all over the world, with the former prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull posting a picture of the pair, who were cousins.

“Thank you Angela for the joy & love you have shared with all the world all your life,” Turnbull tweeted.

Lansbury was around 60 years old when she bagged the role that made her popular: the mystery writer and amateur detective in the hit television series “Murder, She Wrote.”

In a career of over seven decades, she featured in about 60 films and starred in some of Broadway’s biggest musicals.

She won six Golden Globes, five Tony Awards for her work in American theatre and, in 2013, an honorary lifetime Oscar.

She is most remembered as the down-to-earth, middle-aged widow Jessica Fletcher who hunted criminals in the television series “Murder, She Wrote”, which ran from 1984 to 1996 on US television and was later exported to dozens of countries, making her popular all over the world.

While talking about her fame in 2016, Lansbury said: “I was amazed, almost everywhere in the world knew Jessica Fletcher. They treated me like a rock star.”

The 264-episode series won her four of her Golden Globes, and a fortune as she made around $300,000 per episode.

Lansbury was born on October 16, 1925, in London to a family of politicians and actors.

She emigrated with her widowed mother to the United States, fleeing the World War II blitz in 1940.

Her movie breakthrough happened at the age of 17 when she was cast as the conniving maid Nancy in the 1944 thriller “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman, a role that made her win an Oscar nomination for best-supporting actress and led to a seven-year contract with MGM studios.

Another Oscar nomination followed, for “The Picture of Dorian Gray” in 1946, while she bagged a third nomination for “The Manchurian Candidate” in 1963, roles for which she won two Golden Globes.

However, Lansbury was often sidelined into secondary roles, playing characters that were older than her.

While talking to BBC in 2014, she said: “I was playing older parts when I was terribly young because I wasn’t a big screen beauty. I am a character actress.”

She was not pleased with her slow career in Hollywood and moved to theatre in Broadway in the late 1950s.

She hit stardom in the title role of the 1966 musical “Mame”, about rich New Yorkers during the Depression, for which she trod the boards over 1,500 times and won her first Tony Award. “Gypsy” (1973-1975) and “Sweeney Todd” (1979) later followed.

But she was still picking up roles in cinema and gained a younger audience as the witch in the famous Disney film “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” in 1971.

In 2009, she won her fifth Tony award for her Broadway role as dotty clairvoyant Madame Arcati in Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.”

Lansbury was her second husband, Peter Shaw, for 53 years before he died in 2003.

Great Britain made her a dame in 2014.

A family statement said: “In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great-grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury.