50 Fun Facts About Angela Lansbury

In which city was Angela Lansbury born in 1925?

London. Her birthplace is often given as Poplar in the East End, where her father had been mayor, but she insisted she was born across town in Regent's Park.

Angela Lansbury's mother, the actress Moyna Macgill, was born in which city?

Belfast. In 1940 Moyna Macgill sold everything she could and took Angela and her twin brothers across the Atlantic by ship to escape the wartime bombing.

Angela Lansbury earned an Oscar nomination for her film debut in which 1944 thriller?

Gaslight. Lansbury was a teenager working in a department store when she was cast as the sly maid, and the film's title later gave English a verb for making someone doubt their own sanity.

Who played the tormented heroine Paula in Angela Lansbury's 1944 debut film?

Ingrid Bergman won the Best Actress Oscar for the role. To give her version a clear run, the studio had demanded that every print of a 1940 British film of the same play be destroyed.

Who directed Angela Lansbury's 1944 debut film?

George Cukor. Five years earlier he had been replaced as director of Gone with the Wind, yet he became famous as a 'woman's director' who drew award-winning performances from his actresses.

Angela Lansbury's 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray adapted a novel by which author?

Oscar Wilde. By her own account, the teenage Lansbury went to audition for it and was rushed off to test for another film first; as the jilted singer Sibyl Vane she then earned her second Oscar nomination in two years.

Angela Lansbury lost the 1945 supporting-actress Oscar to Anne Revere, her co-star in which film?

National Velvet. Revere won as the mother of Elizabeth Taylor's horse-mad heroine, with Lansbury as the older sister, and six years later the Hollywood blacklist halted Revere's film career.

Which studio signed the teenage Angela Lansbury to a seven-year contract?

MGM. It kept casting the young Lansbury as older or nastier women, and she later said she had 'wasted' eight years there because the studio had no idea what to do with her.

In a 1961 musical, Angela Lansbury played the mother of which singing star, less than a decade her junior?

Elvis Presley. Lansbury was in her mid-thirties when she played his fussing mother in Blue Hawaii, and she later admitted she took the part only because she was desperate for work.

Angela Lansbury played Semadar in which 1949 epic?

Samson and Delilah. That year she married Peter Shaw: her first marriage, at 19 to the actor Richard Cromwell, had ended within a year, but this one lasted until Shaw's death in 2003.

Angela Lansbury moved her family to Ireland partly because her daughter had fallen in with which cult leader's circle?

Charles Manson. Lansbury said both her children had fallen into hard drugs in Malibu, so in 1970 she bought a house in Ireland where the family could start again.

Angela Lansbury played an assassin's mother in which thriller?

The Manchurian Candidate. Lansbury was only three years older than Laurence Harvey, who played the assassin she mothers and manipulates, and the chilling 1962 performance brought her a third Oscar nomination.

In which 1980 Agatha Christie film did Angela Lansbury play Miss Marple?

The Mirror Crack'd. It proved a rehearsal: her later television sleuth, a village busybody who outwits the local police, is often described as Miss Marple moved to small-town America.

Murder, She Wrote, Angela Lansbury's hit series, was co-created by the duo behind which earlier TV detective show?

Columbo. Richard Levinson and William Link expected little from a mystery with an older heroine: 'We were getting condolences even before we went on the air,' Levinson recalled.

Who wrote the score for Angela Lansbury's Broadway hit Mame?

Jerry Herman. His next musical for Lansbury, Dear World, closed within four months, yet it still won her a second Tony.

Angela Lansbury made her Broadway debut in 1957 opposite which Wizard of Oz star?

Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion, played a builder who lures her character, another man's wife, to a hotel in the farce Hotel Paradiso. Her good reviews led her to do more theatre, where she finally became a star.

In 1986, Angela Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote staged a two-part crossover with which other detective series?

Magnum, P.I. The story began on his show in Hawaii and ended on hers, where the private eye is arrested for murder and the visiting mystery writer has to clear his name.

Who was cast instead of Angela Lansbury in the 1974 film version of Mame?

Lucille Ball. The studio wanted a bigger box-office name than the stage Mame, to Lansbury's lasting disappointment, but the film drew poor reviews and was not a success.

Dear World, which won Angela Lansbury a second Tony, adapted which Jean Giraudoux play?

The Madwoman of Chaillot. Lansbury was 43 when she played its 75-year-old countess, one more in a long line of parts far older than she was.

In which 1971 Disney musical did Angela Lansbury star as Eglantine Price?

Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Disney reunited the makers of Mary Poppins for it, from the director to the songwriting Sherman brothers, and handed Lansbury the lead.

Angela Lansbury's third Tony came for playing which role in Gypsy?

Rose. The revival began in 1973 as the show's British premiere, co-produced by her brother Edgar, and the monstrous stage mother won Lansbury her Tony when it reached Broadway.

In the original 1979 Sweeney Todd, Angela Lansbury played Mrs. Lovett opposite which actor in the title role?

Len Cariou. He and Lansbury each won a Tony for the show and left it together in March 1980, when George Hearn and Dorothy Loudon took over the two roles.

Who directed Angela Lansbury in the original Broadway Sweeney Todd?

Harold Prince. The Broadway giant rarely made films, but one of his few, the 1970 comedy Something for Everyone, had already starred Lansbury as a countess.

Which All in the Family star turned down the lead in Murder, She Wrote before Angela Lansbury took it?

Jean Stapleton showed guarded interest, then withdrew. The show's makers thought the project was dead until Lansbury let it be known that she might try television.

Which short-lived Sondheim show was Angela Lansbury's first stage musical?

Anyone Can Whistle closed after nine performances in 1964, but it changed her career: 'I had a little, high soprano, and they wanted a belter,' she said, 'so I learned how to belt.'

On Murder, She Wrote, Angela Lansbury played which amateur sleuth?

Jessica Fletcher. Lansbury had real say over the character: when executives suggested giving the widowed novelist a love interest, she rejected the idea outright.

Angela Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote character lived in which fictional town?

Cabot Cove, a seaside village in Maine. In later seasons the writers moved its most famous resident to Manhattan for part of each year, and many of the murders went with her.

What was the job of Angela Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote character before she became a mystery novelist?

School teacher. In the first episode the widowed former English teacher has written a mystery as a hobby, and her nephew secretly sends it to a publisher, launching her new career.

Angela Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote aired on which US network?

CBS. Few expected a mystery about a bicycle-riding widow to survive, yet it became a huge hit and in its second season outdrew Steven Spielberg's much-hyped Amazing Stories.

In 1995, Murder, She Wrote was moved to Thursdays from which night of the week?

Sunday. For eleven seasons it ranked among television's top shows there; shifted to Thursdays it sank to 58th, and the final episode was pointedly titled 'Death by Demographics'.

For its 12th season, Murder, She Wrote was moved to Thursdays opposite which hit sitcom launched a year earlier?

Friends. The young hit drew the audience advertisers wanted, Angela Lansbury's veteran mystery tumbled down the ratings, and its last episode was pointedly titled 'Death by Demographics'.

Angela Lansbury's grandfather George, a socialist campaigner, led which British political party in the early 1930s?

Labour. George Lansbury was a lifelong pacifist, and in 1935 he resigned the leadership after the party conference rejected his stand against sanctions and rearmament.

Which member of Angela Lansbury's family became one of Murder, She Wrote's regular directors?

Her son, Anthony Shaw, had overcome teenage drug problems in Ireland, become an actor and moved into directing, while her brother Bruce wrote and produced for the show.

In Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991), Angela Lansbury voiced which character?

Mrs. Potts. Lansbury doubted the title song suited her voice, then went into the booth and recorded the version used in the film in a single take; it won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Angela Lansbury voiced an empress in which 1997 animated film?

Anastasia. Lansbury voiced the Dowager Empress who searches for her lost granddaughter, and fifteen years later, at 86, she was cast in the same role for a reading of the Broadway musical version.

In which 2005 family film did Angela Lansbury play the domineering Great-Aunt Adelaide?

Nanny McPhee. Lansbury had sunk into depression after her husband's death in 2003, and she said that making Emma Thompson's film 'pulled me out of the abyss'.

In Mary Poppins Returns (2018), Angela Lansbury had a cameo as which character?

The Balloon Lady. Julie Andrews had turned down a cameo in the sequel so as not to upstage Emily Blunt, and the producers had reportedly considered her for this very part.

Angela Lansbury's 2009 Broadway return in Blithe Spirit cast her as which character?

Madame Arcati, the eccentric medium, won Lansbury her fifth Tony at 83. She liked the part so much that she returned to it five years later and was still touring in it at 89.

Angela Lansbury's fifth Tony, in 2009, tied the acting record then held by which actress?

Julie Harris had won all five of hers in plays, the last in 1977, while Lansbury's first four all came in musicals. Her fifth, at 83, was the only one she won for a play.

Angela Lansbury played Madame Armfeldt in a 2009 Broadway revival of which Sondheim show?

A Little Night Music. Lansbury, at 84, played the worldly mother of Catherine Zeta-Jones's actress, and when the pair left in June 2010 Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch stepped into their roles.

Angela Lansbury won which British theatre award for the first time at 89, for Blithe Spirit?

Olivier Award. She won it for the same role that had brought her a Tony in 2009, on her first appearance on the British stage in nearly 40 years, and received a standing ovation.

Who presented Angela Lansbury with her damehood at Windsor Castle in 2014?

Queen Elizabeth II. Lansbury, 88 and seven decades into an American career, called it 'a very proud day for me to be recognized by the country of my birth'.

Angela Lansbury's final screen appearance was a cameo as herself in which 2022 whodunit?

Glass Onion. Lansbury and her old collaborator Stephen Sondheim both pop up as themselves, in what proved the last screen role for each, and both had died by the time the film came out.

Angela Lansbury was nominated 18 times without ever winning which award?

Emmy Award. Twelve of the nominations came for Murder, She Wrote, one for every season it ran, and she lost each time, even as the same role won her Golden Globes.

Angela Lansbury turned down the female lead in which 1975 film?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The part she refused, Nurse Ratched, won its eventual player the Best Actress Oscar, while Lansbury herself never won a competitive Oscar in three nominations.

In State of the Union (1948), Angela Lansbury played a newspaper magnate opposite which famous screen couple?

Tracy and Hepburn. Lansbury was only 22 when she played the hard-nosed publisher out to steal Tracy's presidential candidate from his wife, played by a Hepburn 18 years her senior.

Angela Lansbury's half-sister Isolde married which actor, later Lansbury's co-star in Death on the Nile?

Peter Ustinov. The 1940 marriage ended in 1950, yet he and his former sister-in-law hosted the 1968 Tony Awards together, a decade before he played Poirot beside her.

In The Court Jester (1956), Angela Lansbury's princess falls for a jester played by which comedian?

Danny Kaye. The comedy showcased his rapid-fire patter, and its tongue-twister about 'the pellet with the poison' in 'the vessel with the pestle' became the film's best-remembered line.

In 2017, Angela Lansbury played Aunt March in a BBC adaptation of which classic novel?

Little Women. Lansbury had just withdrawn from a planned Broadway return in The Chalk Garden, but at 91 she could not resist playing the imperious Aunt March for television.

After a brush fire destroyed their Malibu home, Angela Lansbury's family moved to a farmhouse in which Irish county?

Cork. Lansbury said the move saved her children from drugs; she became an Irish citizen, kept a home there for the rest of her life and left it to her children.