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The world lost a Hollywood legend today. The great Angela Lansbury died at the age of 96, her family announced in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. She died peacefully in her sleep, just five days before her 97th birthday.
If there was anyone who could say they’d seen it all in Hollywood, it would be Lansbury. Her prolific career on the screen and stage spans nearly eight decades. She’s been a household name in the industry since before your parents were born. She was one of the last living stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and her lost will be felt throughout the world.
Though she later became famous as a TV star in Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury’s first home was the pictures. The motion pictures, that is. The list of Angela Lansbury movie roles is endless, starting with an Oscar-nominated performance in Gaslight in 1944, and ending with an upcoming posthumous performance in Netflix’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. If you’re looking to honor the late star today, here are 7 Angela Lansbury movies to watch, as well as where you can stream them.
'Gaslight' (1944)
Angela Lansbury is such a legend that she was there when the term “gaslighting” was invented, in this 1944 psychological thriller about a husband who convinces a wife she is crazy. Lansbury stars as a beautiful young maid who flirts with the husband—not exactly a feminist ally character, but an iconic one nonetheless, which earned Lansbury an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Streaming on: HBO Max, buy or rent VOD
'National Velvet' (1944)
Who was moaning about boys while Elizabeth Taylor was riding horses in this golden-age Hollywood classic? Why, it was none other Angela THEE Lansbury, who played Taylor’s boy-crazy, on-screen older sister. While it’s not a huge role, it’s a reminder that Lansbury is an integral part of Hollywood history.
Streaming on: Buy or rent on VOD
'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (1945 film)
You don’t want to miss Lansbury in this adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s famed horror novel. As Sibyl Vane, a singer who is briefly engaged to the handsome aristocrat Dorian Gray, she’s naive, in love, and eventually, cruelly heartbroken. The role earned Lansbury her second supporting actress nomination in two years. How many times can we say the word “legend?”
Streaming on: Buy or rent on VOD
'The Manchurian Candidate'(1962)
Perhaps you heard the term “Manchurian candidate,” meaning a politician who is secretly controlled by an enemy state, being thrown around during the Trump presidency. This is a term that comes from yet another Angela Lansbury movie, this time based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel. As Mrs. Eleanor Iselin, Lansbury is a regular Lady Macbeth, masterminding a plan to further her on-screen husband’s political career. The role earned Lansbury her third Oscar nomination, though, sadly, not a win.
Streaming on: Tubi, buy or rent on VOD
'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' (1971)
You likely think of Beauty and the Beast when you think of Angela Lansbury’s Disney resume, but let us not forget this live-action and animation hybrid Disney film in which Lansbury played a curmudgeonly but ultimately kind-hearted witch who cares for three British children after they are evacuated from London during WWII. She’s magical, she sings, and don’t you dare compare her to Mary Poppins.
Streaming on: Disney+, buy or rent on VOD
'Beauty and the Beast' (1991)
Perhaps the Angela Lansbury role that millennials know best, her voice performance as the motherly Mrs. Potts in the animated 90s Beauty and the Beast film defined many a childhood. Sure, technically Mrs. Potts was Chip’s mom, but she was kind of all of our moms, too. We’ll always want to be her guest.
Streaming on: Disney+, buy or rent on VOD
'Mary Poppins Returns' (2018)
One of Lansbury’s last film roles—besides her role in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which will release in theaters and on Netflix later this year—was a brief but memorable appearance in Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel to the Disney classic. Lansbury appears in a cameo role as an old woman selling balloons in the park—which, fun fact, was originally written as a cameo role for Julie Andrews.
Streaming on: Disney+, buy or rent on VOD
