Angela Lansbury, Beloved Actress and 'Murder, She Wrote' Star, Dead at 96
etonline.com.Perhaps best known for her TV role as everyone's favorite detective on, the London-born Lansbury was as legendary as she was lovable — so much so that she scored a perfect 100 on 's ultra-scientific «lovability index» in the mid-1990s.The daughter of an actress and a wealthy politician, a pre-teen Lansbury, buried between the arts and politics, took to acting as a method of coping with her father's untimely death, which she described as «the defining moment» of her life.
Upon moving to the United States while World War II was still raging, Lansbury was quickly contracted by MGM, where she appeared in her first film (, 1944), earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the young age of 19.While Lansbury landed her second Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win just a year later for her role as a working-class music hall singer in, she was often quick to dismiss her years with MGM, who frequently miscast her in older, somewhat villainous roles alongside the likes of Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor and Judy Garland.«I was always playing somebody else, a different kind of woman than I was myself,» she told of her time with the media conglomerate. «I regret terribly the years that I wasted playing a bunch of women who weren’t me at all.»It was during this time the British character actress met her second and longtime husband, Peter Shaw, shortly after ending a brief marriage to Richard Cromwell (Lansbury later found out Cromwell was gay).
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