Murder, She Wrote star Angela Lansbury has died aged 96 after a glittering career in TV, film and Broadway.
Angela's children announced the actress had died peacefully at home in Los Angeles this afternoon - just five days before her 97th birthday.
"The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 a.m. today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday," her family said in a statement.
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"In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury.
"She was proceeded in death by her husband of 53 years, Peter Shaw. A private family ceremony will be held at a date to be determined."
Tributes poured in to the actor, including from Will and Grace actor Eric McCormack, who starred with Angela in a play, and described her as an "incredible woman", adding there was "no one like her."
The actress, was perhaps best known as amateur detective Jessica Fletcher in the classic US series Murder, She Wrote.
She played Jessica from 1984 until 1996.
Her mother, Moyna Macgill, was a former West End actress from Belfast who performed on the stage and found considerable fame in her own right during the early days of film.
Angela had huge success when she first started out her acting career.
She was nominated for an Oscar for her first role, as the maid in 1944 classic Gaslight, and went on to work with stars including Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
Other credits to her name include The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) and her compelling performance in All Fall Down (1962), as a manipulative mother.
Her highest profile cinematic role since The Manchurian Candidate was as the voice of the motherly teapot Mrs. Potts in the Disney animation Beauty and the Beast in 1991.
Angela sung Tale As Old As Time in the film, which won an Academy Award and Grammy.
The actress said her considered her role as Mrs Potts to be a gift to her three grandchildren.
Lansbury made her final film appearance in the 2018 film Buttons: A Christmas Tale, starring alongside Dick Van Dyke.
But there is more to her story than Hollywood. She grew up in London, the granddaughter of working-class hero George Lansbury, who led Labour from 1932 to 1935.
Angela previously said the peace campaigner was her greatest inspiration: "This was the man who tried to stop the Second World War.
"He went and spoke with the leaders – Mussolini, Hitler, Roosevelt. He didn’t give up. Many people feel it killed him."
Her grandmother, Bessie, was a suffragette and dad Edgar was a Communist mayor in Poplar, East London, who died of cancer when Angela was nine.
At 15, mum Moyna took Angela to New York to escape the Blitz and from there she went to Hollywood.
At 19, she wed 35-year-old actor Richard Cromwell but it ended less than a year later.
Angela then fell for British actor Peter Shaw. They had two children, Anthony and Deidre.
Peter died of heart failure aged 84 in 2003, after 54 years’ marriage.
Angela previously said: “I think I’m interested in every part of life – not just acting... my grandchildren, my life, cooking, driving.”
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