Dame Angela Lansbury, the acclaimed actor of stage, film, and television, has died, her family said Tuesday. She was 96.
The actor died in her Los Angeles home at 1:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday, her three children said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News.She was just five days shy of her 97th birthday
Lansbury, who was awarded a damehood in 2014, was best known for her 12-season stint on CBS’s Murder, She Wrote, in which she played Maine resident Jessica Fletcher, a successful mystery writer turned amateur detective. The show ran from 1984 to 1996, and for most of those years, it was in the top 10 most-watched shows on television.
The family moved to New York City during the beginning of World War II to avoid the bombings by Germany during the London Blitz. From there, Lansbury studied acting and soon moved to Los Angeles to be in movies.
Her first role was in the 1944 paranoiac classic Gaslight, in which she played a maid, working opposite Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. She earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the role. The next year, she was nominated again for Best Supporting Actress for 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.