BELOVED Angela Lansbury confesses she’s still devastated by her father’s death 80 years ago, as she opens up about the life-shaping events that have made her who she is today.
Known as senior super-sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the megahit CBS drama Murder, She Wrote, the 88-year-old actress still weeps when talking about her dad Edgar, who died of cancer at age 48 in 1934.
“That was the defining moment of my life,” says Lansbury. “Nothing before or since has ever affected me so deeply. It also altered the shape of my life. I became something of a dreamer, lost in my grief. I became much more interested in acting, following the example of my mother.”
With the ties to her dad’s London wood veneer company gone, Lansbury’s Irish mother, actress Moyna MacGill, moved the family to New York, then L.A.