Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury DBE was an Irish-British and American actress and singer who died on October 11, 2022.
She played a variety of roles in film, theater, and television over the course of her eight-decade career. Despite spending most of her life in the United States, her work garnered international attention and a slew of awards.
Lansbury was born in Central London to an upper-middle-class family, the daughter of Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury. She moved to the United States in 1940 to escape the Blitz and studied acting in New York City. She moved to Hollywood in 1942 and signed with MGM, where she landed her first film roles in Gaslight (1944), National Velvet (1944), and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), for which she won several awards.
She appeared in eleven more MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract expired in 1952, she began to supplement her film work with theatrical appearances. Despite being considered a B-list star during this time, her performance in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is widely regarded as one of her best. Lansbury rose to prominence as the lead in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which earned her her first Tony Award and established her as a gay icon.
Who is Angela Lansbury’s husband Peter Shaw?
Lansbury married Peter Shaw, a British actor who left MGM to become a studio executive and agent, in 1949. He became Lansbury’s manager. They had two children, Anthony and Deidre, and he had a son from a previous marriage.
