Angela Lansbury, star of screen and stage, dies at 96

Angela Lansbury has died at age 96. Photo / AP

Angela Lansbury, the big-eyed, scene-stealing British actress who kicked up her heels in the Broadway musicals Mame and Gypsy and solved endless murders as crime novelist Jessica Fletcher in the long-running TV series Murder, She Wrote, has died. She was 96.

Lansbury died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, according to a statement from her three children. She died five days shy of her 97th birthday.

Lansbury won five Tony Awards for her Broadway performances and a lifetime achievement award. She earned Academy Award nominations as supporting actress for two of her first three films, Gaslight (1945) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1946), and was nominated again in 1962 for The Manchurian Candidate, and her deadly portrayal of a Communist agent and the title character's mother.

Her mature demeanor prompted producers to cast her much older than her actual age. In 1948, when she was 23, her hair was streaked with gray so she could play a fortyish newspaper publisher with a yen for Spencer Tracy in State of the Union.

Ginger Rogers, left, star of the Broadway musical "Hello, Dolly" crowns Angela Lansbury, who's starring in "Mame," with the crown of Miss Ziegfeld 1967 on Dec. 2, 1966. Photo / AP

Her stardom came in middle age when she became the hit of the New York theatre, winning Tony Awards for Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), Gypsy (1975) and Sweeney Todd (1979).

In 2009 she collected her fifth Tony, for best featured actress in a revival of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit and in 2015 won an Olivier Award in the role.

But Lansbury's widest fame began in 1984 when she launched Murder, She Wrote on CBS. Based loosely on Agatha Christie's Miss Marple stories, the series centred on Jessica Fletcher, a middle-aged widow and former substitute school teacher living in the seaside village of Cabot Cove, Maine. She had achieved notice as a mystery novelist and amateur sleuth.

Angela Lansbury, the star of Broadway's newest musical "Mame," appears at a party following the opening of the show in New York, on May 24, 1966. Photo / AP

The actress found the first series season exhausting.

Despite the long days — she left her home at Brentwood in West Los Angeles at 6am and returned after dark — and reams of dialogue to memorise, Lansbury maintained a steady pace. She was pleased that Jessica Fletcher served as an inspiration for older women.

Angela Lansbury accepts her Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for her role in "Blithe Spirit" at the 63rd Annual Tony Awards. Photo / AP

Murder, She Wrote stayed high in the ratings through its 11th year. It and other television work brought her 18 Emmy nominations but she never won one. She holds the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for best actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for lead actress in a drama series.

Angela Lansbury attends the PBS Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour on Jan. 16, 2018. Photo / AP

In a 2008 Associated Press interview, Lansbury said she still welcomed the right script but did not want to play "old, decrepit women", she said. "I want women my age to be represented the way they are, which is vital, productive members of society."

"I'm astonished at the amount of stuff I managed to pack into the years that I have been in the business. And I'm still here!"