Angela Lansbury, the scene-stealing British-American actor who kicked up her heels in the Broadway musicals “Mame” and “Gypsy” and solved endless murders as crime novelist Jessica Fletcher in the long-running TV series “Murder, She Wrote,” has died. She was 96.

Her career, much of it in the United States, spanned eight decades, and her work received much international attention. She was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema at the time of her death. 

Angela Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family in Central London. To escape WWII, she moved to the United States in 1940, studying acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed to MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944), National Velvet (1944), and the Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award. 

Moving into television in 1984, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. 

In later years she mused about her career and the many struggles of life:

“The only thing I ever had confidence in is my ability to perform,” she said. “That has been the grace note in my sonata of life, the thing that has absolutely seen me through thick and thin.”

When faced with immense personal tragedy – “It’s like cutting off a branch, a big, luscious branch of your life and sealing it off with a sealer so it doesn’t bleed, That’s what you do. That’s how the human mind deals with those things. You have to pick up the pieces and go on.”

She was a consummate actor, making her penultimate film appearance in the 2018 film Buttons: A Christmas Tale.

She once said:

"I believe that God is within all of us, that we are perfect, precious beings, and that we have to put our faith and trust in that."

Angela Lansbury died peacefully in her sleep at her home in Los Angeles, California.