Is Angela Lansbury Still Alive? A Look into Her Life and Whereabouts Now

Angela Lansbury's stint in show business lasted longer than most of us have been alive. The actress made her debut in the movie industry in 1944.

And in all her years of being in front of the camera, she never grew tired of it, although she has appeared less on our screens as time has passed. She never lost that zeal for performing.

It's her absence from people's screens in recent times that has prompted them to ask questions about whether she is still alive. So is she? And if she is, what is she doing now?

Is Angela Lansbury Still Alive?

Yes, Lansbury (full name: Angela Brigid Lansbury) is still alive. The legendary actress is 96 years old as of August 2022 and is set to turn 97 on October 16, 2022.

She was born in 1925 to Moyna Macgill, a Belfast-born actress, and Edgar Lansbury, an English timber merchant, in central London. It might not be that wrong to speculate she always had some familiarity with acting, but it did not become a big part of her life until a few years later.

At age nine, Lansbury lost her father to stomach cancer, an incident that led her to use acting and playing characters to cope with the grief. That became an entry point to her lifelong interest in the performative arts — she grew up in movies and books and became a "complete movie maniac" early in her life.

Angela Lansbury is still alive and now splits time between California, New York, and Ireland. (Photo: Eva Rinaldi/Wikimedia Commons)

She studied music alongside acting and starred in plays before her mother moved her and two of her siblings to the US. First, she secured a scholarship to study theatre in New York, then worked in plays in the city, both as an actress and a singer.

After this came her move to Los Angeles — she followed her mother to the west coast — and it was there she secured her first movie role in Gaslight in 1944. 

111 more acting roles have followed the 1944 debut. Lansbury's latest project came in 2018, a movie called Buttons, A New Musical Film. She portrayed Rose in the movie.

Lansbury conquered movies, TV, and theater in her lifetime. And, she is not the one to retire — not this soon, anyway, as she is still feeling very much not 96.

Why Angela Lansbury Won’t Retire Just Yet

Lansbury's love for acting and the business in general has not died yet. She has reiterated her wish to continue performing in multiple instances.

"I think the exciting thing about acting is I leave myself at home," said the actress of her approach to acting during an interview with AARP in May 2018. "And the person that arrives on the set is hopefully akin to the character that I’m going to play."

That approach to her job gave her the chance to do what she loved doing most — acting. She even claimed that she was "dull as a dishwasher" on her own and not playing a character, clearly stating she loved acting and did not want to let go of it anytime soon.

"I'm interested in every part of life. In other words, not just acting," she told Larry King in December 2018 when asked what kept her going. Her family, her love for independence, and her wish to create and keep a life after her husband's passing kept her active.

As for retiring, she confessed she did not even think of retiring. Lansbury even joked she would "probably pass away with one hand on my script."

When the interview was taken, she was in two movies — The Grinch and Mary Poppins Returns. Those are two of the three movies she did in 2018, the third one being the one mentioned above.

She has not appeared in any movies or shows since, but that is not because she is not feeling great.

"I feel full of energy and I certainly don't feel 93," the Mary Poppins Returns actress said in an interview a while ago (as per Express). She even revealed her secrets to being healthy at her age — "a glass of red wine" and "a lot of vitamins."

She gave up drinking, or as she called it, her "nights on the bathroom floor," in 1974 and took "excruciating" care of herself as of 2014. "At this rate, I see no reason why I shouldn't live to 98," she told Daily Mail that year.

As for now, the Murder, She Wrote actress splits time between Brentwood, California, New York, and Ireland — she moved to Ireland in the 1970s after her children, Anthony and Diedre, indulged in recreational drugs and bad company a bit too much.