British-born actress Angela Lansbury died at age 96, her family said on Tuesday.
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Lansbury turned in riveting supporting performances, including her film debut as a teenager playing the conniving Cockney maid in "Gaslight" in 1944, as the doomed Sibyl in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" in 1945 and as Laurence Harvey's evil, manipulative mother in "The Manchurian Candidate" in 1962. All three roles earned her Academy Award nominations.
Nearly seven decades after her first film, she was awarded an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement at age 88 in November 2013. Her other movie credits included "National Velvet" (1944), "The Dark At the Top of the Stairs" (1960), "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971) and "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980).
Lansbury won five Tony awards for Broadway performances as the original "Mame," Gypsy Rose Lee's mother Mama Rose in "Gypsy," the baker of human meat pies in "Sweeney Todd," Countess Aurelia in "Dear World" and the clairvoyant Madame Arcati in "Blithe Spirit."
She maintained a grueling acting schedule well into her 80s, appearing on Broadway in 2012 in "The Best Man" with fellow octogenarian James Earl Jones.
Lansbury reached her broadest audience in "Murder, She Wrote" as retired English teacher-turned mystery writer Jessica Fletcher, who week after week found herself at the scene of a homicide. The series, which ran from 1984 to 1996, brought her 11 of her 18 Emmy nominations. She never won an Emmy, however.
