Anglo-Irish actress Angela Lansbury was BOTD in 1925. Born in London to an upper-middle-class family, she studied acting at the Webber Douglas Academy in London, moving to New York City during World War Two, where she studied at the Feagin School of Drama. Signed by MGM Studios in 1942, she made strong supporting appearances in the psychological thriller Gaslight and the 1945 adaptation of Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray, both earning her Oscar nominations. She languished in B-movies for nearly a decade, until an impressive comeback in 1962 as Laurence Harvey‘s Freudian nightmare mother in The Manchurian Candidate, earning a third Oscar nomination. In 1965, she became a Broadway star in the musical Mame, winning her first Tony Awards. A favoured actress of composer Stephen Sondheim, she starred as Mama Rose in a 1975 revival of the musical Gypsy, and originated the role of the cannibalistic Mrs Lovett in 1979’s Sweeney Todd, both winning her Tony Awards. Her film output during the 1970s was sparse, though she had a hit with the 1971 Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks, gave a masterclass in camp as romance novelist Salomé Otterbourne in the 1978 film of Agatha Christie’s Death On the Nile, and played Christie’s elderly detective Miss Marple in the film The Mirror Crack’d. In 1984, she starred and executive produced the TV murder mystery TV series Murder, She Wrote, playing the indefatigably cheery mystery writer-turned-detective Jessica Fletcher. The show ran for 12 seasons until 1996, becoming one of the most popular and long-running TV serials in history, earning her four Golden Globe Awards and a global network of fans. Notable later performances included Mrs Potts the teapot in the 1991 animated film Beauty and the Beast; the frosty Irish mother of a gay man dying of AIDS in the 2004 TV film of Colm Tóibín‘s novel The Blackwater Lightship; the 2007 Broadway premiere of Terrence McNally‘s play Deuce; and a cameo in the children’s film Nanny McPhee. Continuing to act into her 80s, she stormed Broadway and London’s West End as Madame Arcati in a 2014 revival of Noël Coward‘s comedy Blithe Spirit, earning her fifth Tony Award and an Olivier Award. One of the world’s most beloved actresses, her camp persona and support of HIV/AIDS charities earned her legions of gay fans. Married twice and with two children, she died in 2022, five days before her 97th birthday.