Angela Lansbury's Real Name: Angela Brigid Lansbury

Quick answer: Angela Lansbury's documented full name is Angela Brigid Lansbury. The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers and Who's Who of American Women record that name and her birth on October 16, 1925, in London. Encyclopaedia Britannica records that she died on October 11, 2022, in Los Angeles. She was a British-born American actress of stage, film, and television, best known as Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote (Britannica; Encyclopedia.com).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress heading is "Lansbury, Angela, 1925-." The International Dictionary gives "Angela Brigid Lansbury," born in London on 16 October 1925, and notes that she became a U.S. citizen in 1951. Britannica says she and her widowed mother, the actress Moyna MacGill, emigrated from England to the United States in 1940. From 1940 to 1942 she studied acting at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio in New York City.

Career highlights

Lansbury's film debut was in Gaslight (1944), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress as a Cockney maid. She appeared as Elizabeth Taylor's snobbish sister in National Velvet (1944) and received another Oscar nomination for The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). A third nomination came for The Manchurian Candidate (1962), as Laurence Harvey's mother. Broadway made her a frontline star. She won Tony Awards for Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), Gypsy (1975), and Sweeney Todd (1979), and a fifth Tony in 2009 for Blithe Spirit. Her greatest popular success was Murder, She Wrote, which began in 1984 and ran for 12 seasons, with Lansbury as mystery author Jessica Fletcher; she became executive producer of the series in 1992. Earlier character work included The Harvey Girls (1946) and The Court Jester (1956); later films included Death on the Nile (1978), The Mirror Crack'd (1980) as Miss Jane Marple, Nanny McPhee (2005), and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). She also did voice work for animated features including Beauty and the Beast (1991). After Murder, She Wrote officially ended, she continued to appear as Jessica Fletcher in television movies and later played Aunt March in the miniseries Little Women (2017). She received an honorary Academy Award in 2013 and a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2022. In the 2014 New Year Honours she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Death

Britannica records that Lansbury died on October 11, 2022, in Los Angeles, California.

Name notes for searchers

Angela Brigid Lansbury is the documented full name; she was known professionally as Angela Lansbury and, after 2014, as Dame Angela Lansbury. Searchers looking for Jessica Fletcher or the star of Mame are usually aiming at the same person.