Angela Lansbury, film and stage actress known for her role in Crime Reporter, has died at the age of 96

Angela Lansburythe British-born actress whose career spanned eight decades and produced indelible portraits of a wide range of characters, has died aged 96, her family said in a statement on Tuesday.

In her extensive career, Lansbury has portrayed everything from villains, detectives, and lighter comedic characters on film, stage, and television.

Lansbury, who played a mystery writer on the American television series “the crime reporter” (“Murder, She Wrote“), “died peacefully in his sleep” at his home in Los Angeles, according to a statement released by his children.

The actress was just five days shy of her 97th birthday, according to the statement.

On film, Lansbury turned in riveting supporting performances, including her feature film debut as a teenager playing the scheming Cockney maid in “The dying light” (“Gaslight“) in 1944, as the doomed Sibyl in “The portrait of Dorian Gray” in 1945 and as the evil and manipulative Laurence in “The Ambassador of Fear” (The Manchurian Candidate) in 1962.

All three roles earned him Academy Award nominations.

Nearly seven decades after his first film, he received a Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award at age 88 in November 2013. The Academy Award winners Geoffrey Rush y Emma Thompson they offered a tribute to Lansbury at the ceremony.

Rush praised her as the “living definition of rank”, while Thompson recalled throwing a pie at Lansbury during the filming of the 2005 comedy “Nanny McPhee“.

“I feel really unworthy of this beautiful boy,” Lansbury said, referring to the gold Oscar statuette she was presented with.

His other film credits include “National Velvet” (1944), “The Dark At the Top of the Stairs” (1960), “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” (1971) y “The Mirror Crack”d” (1980).

Lansbury won five Tony Awards for her Broadway performances as Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother, Mama Rose, in “Gypsy“, the human meat pie cook in “Sweeney Todd“, Countess Aurelia in “Dear World“and the clairvoyant Madame Arcati in”cheerful spirit“.

Lansbury maintained a grueling acting schedule well into the 1980s, appearing in Broadway a 2012 a “The Best Manalongside his octogenarian colleague James Earl Jones.