Angela Lansbury Was 'Very Proud' to Be Made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth | "I'm So Glad I Had It"

Angela Lansbury best known for her role on CBS' Murder, She Wrote passed away at age 96 "on October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday," her family shared via a statement obtained by PEOPLE. "In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre, and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine, and Ian, plus five great-grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury," the statement said. "She was proceeded in death by her husband of 53 years, Peter Shaw. A private family ceremony will be held at a date to be determined."
 

The veteran actress had a flourishing career that lasted decades. Her legacy includes top honors including six Tony Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1996, a 1997 American National Medal of the Arts, a 2000 Kennedy Center Honor, and even an Oscar. To top it all off it was made complete with a royal honor too. Lansbury was awarded a damehood ((the female equivalent of a knighthood) from Queen Elizabeth for her lifetime of acting and her charity work. 

"To meet the Queen under these circumstances is a rare and lovely occasion," Dame Angela Lansbury said at the time when she was 88 years old, according to BBC. She confessed that the honor felt quite different than the time she received an Oscar.  "[The Oscar] is for my work in motion pictures and this is for the overall accomplishments of my life as an actress," she said. "It has afforded me the joy of working in America and also in England a great deal." 

The actress was 92 years old when she first worked with a female director Vanessa Caswill on PBS’s Little Women miniseries. “That was an interesting experience for me, and a first, and I’m so glad I had it,” she said on the Masterpiece Studio podcast with Jace Lacob per PEOPLE. “It was a very intimate relationship with a director which I had never really encountered before. She was quite wonderful in her ability to come to us actors — not in a loud way, from a distance she would come and whisper in our ears. And in that way, she was able to impart very subtle things that otherwise perhaps as a woman she might not have wanted to, for everybody to hear. But for the actor to hear it was delightful and I loved working that way with her.” Speaking of the male directors she had worked with in her lifetime, she said, “I’ve worked with some of the loudest, shouty directors believe me."

References:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27047088

https://people.com/royals/angela-proud-made-dame-queen-elizabeth/

https://people.com/movies/angela-lansbury-working-female-director-first-time-92/

Cover Image Source: Getty Images | (L) Photo by Steve Parsons - WPA Pool (R) Photo by Yui Mok - WPA Pool