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“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are saddened to announce that their mother passed away peacefully in her sleep at her home in Los Angeles,” the family said.
Born in London, Dame Angela later moved to New York and attended the Feagin School of Dramatic Art.
She was spotted by a Hollywood executive at a party in 1942 and was given her first role as a maid in the 1944 film Gaslight.
Her subsequent career took her from Broadway to Hollywood, with success on the big and small screen.
But it was her portrayal of sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the TV series Murder, She Wrote that won her millions of fans around the world.
She took the role in 1984 and continued for 12 years and nine seasons.
The show made her one of the richest women in the US at the time, with an estimated fortune of $100 million.
She earned Oscar nominations for her role as a maid in Gaslight, and as Sibyl in The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1945, and Laurence Harvey’s manipulative mother in The Manchurian Candidate in 1962.
She was also awarded an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar at the age of 88 in 2013.
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During the ceremony, fellow actor Geoffrey Rush hailed her as “the living definition of range”.
It followed with a lifetime achievement award from Bafta in 2002, as well as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
After a move to Broadway in the 1960s, she won several Tony Awards, including for her portrayal of Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd in 1970.
She was made a Dame in 2014 for services to drama, charity work and philanthropy.
