Premeditation
As the daughter of a Belfast-born actress, Moyna MacGill, and the granddaughter of 1930s British Labour Party leader George Lansbury, Angela was born with showmanship woven into her genes. Born in the UK, she moved to the US at the beginning of WWII, where she stayed, becoming a citizen in 1951.

Angela's private life got off to a rocky start with an ill-fated marriage to actor Richard Cromwell. She was 19 and he was 35. She was heterosexual, he was gay. After a year they divorced, and soon after she entered a much happier marriage, to actor Peter Shaw. It was a miraculously stable showbiz marriage that lasted until his death in 2003.

Angela and Richard had two kids together - a daughter, who most notably spent a good deal of time with the Manson family in the 60s (with written permission from her mum) and a son who became the producer of Murder, She Wrote.

Initiation
Lansbury's nascent professional life was far more successful than her early personal life. She trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, a distinction she shares with Terence Stamp, Hugh Bonneville, Minnie Driver and Julian Fellowes. Her debut appearance in Gaslight (1944), in which she costarred with Ingrid Bergman, got her the first of many Academy Award nominations. She received another nomination for her role in The Picture of Dorian Grey (1945), in which her mother also appeared.

Angela had to wait almost two decades for her next nomination, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which she worked with Frank Sinatra. Though Sinatra's daughter produced the 2004 Denzel Washington remake with her father's blessing, Lansbury said she thought the remake was "a lousy idea".

The plot thickens
Despite her worthy start as a 'serious' actress, children of the 1980s will always remember Lansbury best as the singing teapot in Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991), while 1970s kids think of her fondly as the apprentice witch in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). The modern crop of young moviegoers will only recognize Lansbury as the lady who gets a pie in the face from scary Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson).

Angela's had hordes of other memorable movie appearances: she was part of the horsey set in National Velvet (1944), lady writer Salome Otterbourne in Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (1978), the lady who vanishes in The Lady Vanishes (1979), and the hard-of-hearing singing nanny in The Pirates of Penzance (1983). Angela also had a cameo in the Jack Nicholson comedy, About Schmidt (2002).

Command performance
Let's not forget that Lansbury also packs a means set of pipes. She's ventured onto Broadway four times. First to play Mame, alongside Golden Girl Bea Arthur, in 1966. She then appeared in Dear World in 1969 and in Gypsy in 1974. Finally, in 1979 she did a music-hall turn as Mrs Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

For her four Broadway starring roles, Lansbury received four Tony Awards and she holds the record for the only actress that's been nominated more than twice for a Tony and won every time.

Murder by numbers
Unfortunately, Lansbury also holds another awards record: for the most Emmy nominations without a win. Her role as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote has earned her 12 non-winning nominations. Since it's also one of the longest running detective dramas in TV history, and is beloved by millions of people across the globe, we don't suppose that Lansbury cares much about that particular Emmy though...