What Angela Lansbury's Life Was Like After Murder, She Wrote Came To An End

When Angela Lansbury died peacefully in her sleep at age 96 in October 2022, the world lost one of the most beloved actors of the 20th century. Lansbury's heartbreaking death closed the book on a truly extraordinary acting career, spanning nine decades and encompassing film, television, and theater. When looking back at Lansbury's life, it all began with her dazzling Hollywood debut in 1944's "Gaslight" — earning her an Oscar nomination for her first-ever screen performance.

Throughout her career, Lansbury displayed the rare ability to deftly pivot between zany comedy and dark drama, evident in her memorable performances in such disparate films as "The Manchurian Candidate" and Disney's "Bedknobs and Broomsticks." However, when looking back at her numerous roles, one stands out above all the rest: crime-solving novelist Jessica Fletcher in TV mega-hit "Murder, She Wrote," a role she embodied from 1984 until 1996. 

And while she will always be best remembered for those 12 seasons of sleuthing, by no means did the series' end conclude her career. Seventy years old when the show wrapped, Lansbury kept going full throttle, delivering more acclaimed performances and racking up further accolades. To find out more, read on to find out what Angela Lansbury's life was like after "Murder, She Wrote" came to an end.

During production on the final season of "Murder She Wrote," Angela Lansbury was already hard at work on her next project — a made-for-TV holiday musical titled "Mrs. Santa Claus." The TV movie reunited her with composer Jerry Herman, who'd written the score for her 1966 Broadway smash "Mame." In "Mrs. Santa Claus," which aired during the 1996 holiday season, she portrayed Santa's singing, dancing spouse, who battles a nefarious toy maker utilizing child labor and supports the suffragette movement.

Lansbury had been stumbling upon dead bodies in bucolic Cabot Cove, Maine, for more than a decade since she had done the kind of singing and dancing that had made her the toast of Broadway, and she struggled to shake off the rust. Meanwhile, the film was hardly made under ideal conditions. While Lansbury was decked out in winter gear, production took place in Los Angeles during a sweltering August heat wave, and she reportedly experienced heart fibrillations during filming.

The film was generally well-received, proving a hit with viewers and critics alike. "Lansbury's Mrs. Claus only reemphasizes the actress' versatility and treasure chest of talents," gushed a Variety review.

"Murder, She Wrote" may have concluded its 12-season run in 1996, but that wasn't the last that viewers saw of Jessica Fletcher. In 1997, Angela Lansbury revived her best-known character when she starred in "Murder, She Wrote: South by Southwest," the first of four made-for-TV movies to spin off from the original series. In that first movie, Jessica solves a murder that takes place on a train. That was followed by "Murder, She Wrote: A Story to Die For" in 2000, "Murder, She Wrote: The Last Free Man," and the final film, 2003's "Murder, She Wrote: The Celtic Riddle."

As she recalled in an interview with Star2.com (via VisionTV), what Jessica Fletcher fans saw in these TV movies was actually the end result of a lengthy acting process. "Making Jessica Fletcher the character I ended up playing took me several years," Lansbury recalled. "She started off a little bit goofy, but finally, I made her a woman of my age and of my intellect. I think that is what made her such an appealing character for the world — because she was somebody that people could understand and make part of their lives."

Yet the truth was that playing Jessica Fletcher was the one role in Lansbury's career that came the easiest. As she told the Pocono Record, that was because she was essentially just playing herself. "I just was Angela playing Jessica Fletcher, but she was a woman on a level emotionally and mentally with me," she explained, "although she's a lot smarter and cattier and more interested in crime than I am."

During the early 2000s, beyond her "Murder, She Wrote" TV movies, Angela Lansbury also appeared as a guest star on "Touched by an Angel," as well as in a small role in the Jack Nicholson movie "About Schmidt." Yet for an actor accustomed to a busy schedule, this marked a definite slowdown.

The reason for this was a sad one. In 2000, she pulled out of "The Visit," a new Broadway play in which she'd planned to star. She admitted that she felt "absolutely shattered" to exit the show, but revealed that her husband, Peter Shaw, had undergone heart surgery and required a lot of attention while he recuperated. "The kind of commitment required of an artist carrying a multimillion-dollar production has to be 100%, and in fairness to you, I realize I simply couldn't manage being available to you and the company, and fulfill my desire and need to care for Peter," she wrote in a letter to producers, as reported by Playbill. 

In 2003, Shaw died at age 84 from congestive heart failure. He and Lansbury had been married for more than a half-century — one of the longest and most successful marriages in Hollywood history.

After the death of her husband Peter Shaw, Angela Lansbury threw herself back into work. That included a starring role in a TV movie, "Blackwater Lightship," a role in "Nanny McPhee," and a guest-starring appearance in a two-episode crossover between "Law & Order: Trial by Jury" and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

When revisiting the "Law & Order: SVU" episode you forgot Lansbury had starred in, the show featured Lansbury as a very different character than she'd played on "Murder, She Wrote." Here, she wasn't solving crimes; she was covering them up. Portraying wealthy Eleanor Duvall, she attempted to use her money and influence to protect her sexual predator son, played by Alfred Molina. To do so, Eleanor enlisted the services of a sleazy defense attorney, who just happened to be played by future star Bradley Cooper.

Not only did her "Law & Order" role provide Lansbury with the rare opportunity to play a villain — a throwback of sorts to her chilling performance in "The Manchurian Candidate" — the role came with an unexpected bonus. Later that year, her performance earned her an Emmy nomination — the last of 18 she received throughout her career.

Prior to "Murder, She Wrote," Angela Lansbury was known primarily as a film and theater actor. Having made her Broadway debut in 1964, Lansbury went on to win five Tony Awards. Taking a role in a TV series, she told Star2.com (via VisionTV), had a very specific purpose. "I went to television to make some money, because you don't make any money in the theater, and you don't make money from the occasional movie," she said. 

That strategy worked even better than she'd hoped. Thanks to the success of "Murder, She Wrote," Lansbury did indeed make money — lots of it. At the peak of the show's popularity, she was raking in a hefty $200,000 per episode; at the time of her death, Lansbury's stunning net worth was reportedly $70 million.

That financial freedom left her with the coveted opportunity to chase great roles, not big paychecks, and those that most interested her were on the Broadway stage. In 2007, at the age of 81, she took on the leading role in "Deuce," written by famed playwright Terrence McNally. In 2000, she headed the cast of another Broadway production, playing an eccentric clairvoyant in Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit." Later that same year, she took to the stage opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones for a revival of the musical "A Little Night Music." After 12 years on TV, the queen of Broadway had regained her throne.

While Angela Lansbury's primary focus during the late 2000s and early 2010s was theater, she still made time for the occasional film or television project. Such was the case when she signed on to star alongside Jim Carrey in the 2011 family comedy "Mr. Popper's Penguins." Lansbury portrayed the haughty Mrs. Van Gundy, owner of New York City landmark Tavern on the Green. 

That marked the first time Lansbury appeared in a film since 2005's "Nanny McPhee," and in an interview with Blacktree TV, she detailed why "Mr. Popper's Penguins" drew her back to the screen. "To be honest, I have a whole new career in theater. You know, I'm working on Broadway year in, year out, in wonderful parts," she said. "[W]hen they came to me with this, it was really something out of the blue," she added, explaining that she hadn't been seeking out a movie role when she received the offer.  

In fact, Lansbury initially turned it down — until producers sweetened the deal so much that she simply had to do it. "But they came after me, and they tailored [the role], really, to me, and made it something I couldn't refuse," she said. "Plus ... to work with Jim is very special."

Despite reaching the ripe old age of 86, the attraction of the stage was too powerful for Angela Lansbury to resist. In 2012, she returned to Broadway to headline a comedy titled "The Best Man."

As Lansbury told the Journal of Antiques and Collectibles, theater remained her passion. "The discipline of the theater is far more stringent. The curtain goes up at 8 o'clock, and you'd better be there, and you'd better be ready, because there's a whole houseful of people who've paid their money and are ready and willing and waiting to see you," she explained. That said, performing onstage for a few hours each night was nowhere near as much of a grind as producing 22 episodes per year of an hourlong TV drama. As she told the Pocono Record, she did not miss television, not even a little. "Twelve years is a great deal of time to snatch out of a life of the theater to do television," she explained. "It deprives one of so much. You go into this world of television, which is literally a 24-hour job. There's no time off, unlike the theater."

Interestingly, the play found Lansbury sharing the stage with a group of television actors, including "Murphy Brown" star Candice Bergen, Kristin Davis of "Sex and the City," and "Full House" alum John Stamos. "When you're a good actor and you've made it in television and you come to Broadway in the right role, you can attract an enormous attendance," she observed, somewhat pragmatically. "I think it was very wise of the producers to use a group of people who are very well-known from 'the box' as we call it."

While Angela Lansbury was enjoying her late-in-life success on Broadway, Hollywood had not forgotten her. Her first movie, 1944's "Gaslight," landed her an Oscar nomination, followed by a second for her performance in 1945's "The Picture of Dorian Gray," and a third for the 1962 thriller "The Manchurian Candidate." Yet each of those times she returned home from the Academy Awards empty-handed, a situation that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rectified by presenting her with an honorary Oscar in 2013. 

That was a pretty big accolade, yet the following year she received another — and arguably larger — one when Queen Elizabeth II bestowed a huge honor upon her by making her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Lansbury — who at the time was starring in "Blithe Spirit" in London's West End — was presented with the honor by the queen herself, during a ceremony at Windsor Castle. "It is a very proud day for me to be recognized by the country of my birth, and to meet the queen under these circumstances is a rare and lovely occasion," Dame Angela told Sky News.

In her statement, Lansbury compared and contrasted these two accolades, one from Hollywood and the other from the British monarchy. "One [the Oscar] is for my work in motion pictures and this is for the overall accomplishments of my life as an actress," she added.

In late 2013, news emerged that NBC was planning to reboot "Murder, She Wrote." Set to star was Octavia Spencer, whose character was described as a hospital administrator and aspiring mystery novelist who solves crimes in her spare time.

When Angela Lansbury caught wind of the idea, she was far from pleased. "I think it's a mistake to call it 'Murder, She Wrote' because 'Murder, She Wrote' will always be about Cabot Cove and this wonderful little group of people who told those lovely stories and enjoyed a piece of that place, and also enjoyed Jessica Fletcher, who is a rare and very individual kind of person," she told Variety at the time. While Lansbury praised Spencer's abilities as an actor, she was certainly not on board with having her portray Jessica Fletcher. "So I'm sorry that they have to use the title 'Murder, She Wrote,' even though they have access to it and it's their right," she added.

Like many prospective television series, the "Murder, She Wrote" reboot never saw the light of day. When Lansbury learned that the project had been scrapped, she was overjoyed. Interviewed by BBC News, Lansbury admitted she was "terribly pleased and relieved" that NBC had pulled the plug. "I knew it was a terrible mistake," she continued. "I didn't want to sully the memory." One can only imagine how Lansbury might have reacted to the more recent news that Jamie Lee Curtis had been cast to star in a 2027 "Murder, She Wrote" movie.

Angela Lansbury celebrated her milestone 90th birthday in 2015, yet becoming a nonagenarian did little to slow her down. In 2017, she starred in "Little Women," a TV miniseries based on Louisa May Alcott's iconic novel. Speaking about the series with AARP, the 92-year-old actor insisted she had no plans to retire. "I think the exciting thing about acting is I leave myself at home, and the person that arrives on the set is hopefully akin to the character that I'm going to play," she explained. "And that gives me the chance to indulge myself in the thing I love doing most, which is acting. Acting as somebody else, not me, because I'm dull as dishwater."

The following year, she provided the voice for the mayor of Whoville in "The Grinch" and appeared as the Balloon Lady in "Mary Poppins Returns." This is no mere cameo, but a major scene in which she performs a musical number. As the film's director, Rob Marshall, told USA Today, he was thrilled to have her in the movie. "There's a shorthand with Angela Lansbury," he said. "You see her and there's a magic about her. And she sounds unbelievable. The voice is still there, the same voice from [Broadway's] 'Mame' and 'Sweeney Todd.'"

Even though she was approaching her mid-90s, there was no keeping Angela Lansbury off the stage. In 2019, she made what was to be her final appearance on Broadway, starring in a one-night-only production of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." 

That performance — in which she portrayed the prickly Lady Bracknell — was also emblematic of her philanthropy; the entire evening was a benefit for the Roundabout Theatre Company. Ultimately, the show raised $600,000. 

Lansbury's contributions to New York theater were recognized in 2022, when she was presented with a special lifetime achievement Tony Award, adding to the five Tonys she already had. Lansbury was unable to attend the ceremony, which honored her with a special performance by the New York City Gay Men's Chorus.

Weeks before her death, Angela Lansbury's final screen performance made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival: "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." A sequel to the 2019 comedy-mystery "Knives Out," "Glass Onion" finds Southern sleuth Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig) solving a murder mystery on a billionaire's private island. Lansbury appears in just one brief scene, as part of a Zoom meeting during which Blanc enjoys a cigar while soaking in the tub. The other participants in the meeting — all pals of the detective — are legendary Broadway composer Steven Sondheim, actor Natasha Lyonne, and former NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. 

After Lansbury's death, "Glass Onion" director Rian Johnson sang the praises of Lansbury and Sondheim, who had died in November 2021. "They were so kind and generous. We thought, 'My God, would either of them ever do it?' We didn't think they would. And both of them were so cool," Johnson said during a London press conference, via GQ. "For both of them, besides just the honor of having them in the movie, personally just being able to have 10 minutes with each of them to tell them what their work has meant to me was really special."

The film's star also shared his admiration of Lansbury and all that she'd accomplished. "The fact that she's in our movie, we were so blessed, and what an incredible life she had," said Craig.