She continued to make theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade, including leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and The King and I, as well as in the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

[4] Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar.

[7] In January 1930, Macgill gave birth to twin boys, Bruce and Edgar, leading the Lansburys to move from their Poplar flat to a house in Mill Hill, north London; at weekends, they would stay at a farm in Berrick Salome, Oxfordshire.

[15] That year, Lansbury's grandfather died, and with the onset of the Blitz, Macgill decided to take Angela, Bruce and Edgar to the United States; Isolde remained in Britain with her new husband, the actor Peter Ustinov.

[17] Lansbury gained a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio, where she appeared in performances of William Congreve's The Way of the World and Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.

[22] At a party hosted by her mother, Lansbury met John van Druten, who had recently co-authored a script for Gaslight (1944), a mystery-thriller based on Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play, Gas Light.

Directed by Albert Lewin, Lansbury was cast as Sybil Vane, a working class music hall singer who falls in love with the protagonist, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield).

Keeping her among their B-list stars, MGM used her less than their similar-aged actresses; Lansbury biographers Rob Edelman and Audrey E. Kupferberg believed that the majority of these films were "mediocre", doing little to further her career.

[34] She was repeatedly made to portray older women, often villainous, and as a result she became increasingly dissatisfied with working for MGM, commenting that "I kept wanting to play the Jean Arthur roles, and Mr Mayer kept casting me as a series of venal bitches.

[35] In 1946, Lansbury played her first American character as Em, a honky-tonk saloon singer in the Oscar-winning Wild West musical The Harvey Girls;[36] her singing was dubbed by Virginia Reese.

[43] Soon after the birth, she joined the East Coast touring productions of two former-Broadway plays: Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's Remains to be Seen and Louis Verneuil's Affairs of State.

"[48] In 1959, the family moved to Malibu, settling into a house that had been designed by Aaron Green on the Pacific Coast Highway; there, she and Peter escaped the Hollywood scene, and sent their children to public school.

[67] She followed this with a performance as Sybil Logan in In the Cool of the Day (1963) – a film she denounced as awful – before appearing as wealthy Isabel Boyd in The World of Henry Orient (1964) and the widow Phyllis in Dear Heart (1964).

Lansbury had played the role of crooked mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, and although she loved Sondheim's score she experienced personal differences with Laurents and was glad when the show closed.

[98] They then purchased Knockmourne Glebe, a farmhouse built in the 1820s which was located near Conna in rural County Cork, and, after Anthony quit using cocaine and heroin, took him there to recover from his drug addiction.

"[129] A BBC television film followed, A Talent for Murder (1984), in which she played a wheelchair user mystery writer; although describing it as "a rush job", she agreed to do it in order to work with co-star Laurence Olivier.

[134] Murder, She Wrote had been created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson, and William Link, who had earlier had success with Columbo, and the role of Fletcher had been first offered to Jean Stapleton, who had declined it.

[167] Lansbury's highest profile cinematic role since The Manchurian Candidate was as the voice of the singing teapot Mrs. Potts in the 1991 Disney animation Beauty and the Beast, as part of which she performed the film's title song.

[173] While living for most of the year in California, Lansbury spent the Christmas period and the summer at Corymore House, a farmhouse overlooking the Atlantic Ocean near to Ballywilliam, County Cork, which she had had built as a family home in 1991.

[174] In the years following Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury was increasingly preoccupied by her husband's deteriorating health; it was for this reason that she dropped out of being the lead role in the 2001 Kander and Ebb musical The Visit before it opened.

[187] From March to July 2012, Lansbury appeared as women's rights advocate Sue-Ellen Gamadge in the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

[188] From February 2013, she starred alongside James Earl Jones in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy,[189] an appearance that resulted in her pulling out from a scheduled role in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel.

[198] Lansbury agreed to star as Mrs St Maugham in a Broadway run of Enid Bagnold's 1955 play The Chalk Garden, although later acknowledged that she no longer had the stamina for eight performances a week.

[215] In The Daily Telegraph, the theatre critic Dominic Cavendish stated that Lansbury's hallmarks were "self-composure, commitment and, yes, gentility", approaches he thought had become "in too short supply" in modern times.

[245] In The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, Thomas Hischak related that Lansbury was "more a character actress than a leading lady" for much of her career, one who brought "a sparkling stage presence to her work".

[247] A 2007 interviewer for The New York Times described her as "one of the few actors it makes sense to call beloved", noting that a 1994 article in People magazine awarded her a perfect score on its "lovability index".

[78][248] She described herself as being "very proud of the fact", attributing her popularity among gay people to her performance in Mame;[78] an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that Murder, She Wrote had further broadened her appeal with that demographic.

[250] Screenwriter and actor Mark Gatiss praised Lansbury as "the very definition of a pro," while Douglas C. Baker, the producing director for Center Theatre Group, stated that "Angela was a titan of show business, but at the same time she was one of the most kind and approachable people you would ever meet [...] Impeccably professional, genuine and deeply hilarious.

"[253] Others who posted in remembrance of Lansbury included Kristin Chenoweth, Viola Davis, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Harvey Fierstein, Kathy Griffin, Jeremy O. Harris, Brent Spiner, George Takei, and Rachel Zegler.

[258] On being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, Lansbury stated: "I'm joining a marvellous group of women I greatly admire like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.