Angela Lansbury Quotes

Lansbury was born in Poplar, London, to Northern Irish-born actress Moyna MacGill and timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the London Borough of Poplar. She attended South Hampstead High School for Girls, the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art from 1939–40, and the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in New York from 1940-42.
Just prior to the London Blitz, Lansbury's mother took her children to New York City. They arrived in NY on August 25, 1940. When her mother settled in Hollywood following a tour of a Noël Coward play, Lansbury joined her there. Lansbury worked at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. At one of the parties that her mother hosted for British émigré performers in their Laurel Canyon home, Lansbury met the casting director for the upcoming film Gaslight (1944), and he offered her the part of Nancy Oliver, Ingrid Bergman's conniving maid. This was the 18-year-old Lansbury's first film role. She was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar and the following year gained another nomination for her performance as the doomed Sibyl Vane in the film The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945).