Angela Lansbury

Born in central London in 1925 to an Irish actress mother and English politician father, Lansbury fled the Blitz for the United States in 1940 and landed at MGM two years later. Her early film work - Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray - earned Oscar nominations, but the studio kept her in minor roles, and she remained B-list until The Manchurian Candidate in 1962 proved what she could carry. Broadway's Mame in 1966 brought her first Tony and real stardom. After personal troubles, she moved to County Cork in 1970, then spent the decade between stage musicals (Gypsy, Sweeney Todd) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. In 1984 she became Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote, which ran twelve seasons and made her a global fixture; she eventually co-produced it. Later came Beauty and the Beast, Anastasia, and a run of live productions into her nineties. She died in 2022, five days before her ninety-seventh birthday, having worked for eighty years.