I started in London, as a kid. My mother knew I had sort of an inbred talent. She was an actress, so I inherited it from her. But I think I got a lot of it from my grandfather, who was a great politician.

Facing financial difficulty her mother became engaged to Leckie Forbes a Scottish military colonel and moved into his house in Hampstead with Angela receiving an education at South Hampstead High School from 1934 until 1939. In 1982 a recording of the show was released by Varèse Sarabande. She remarried in 1949 this time to Peter Pullen Shaw.

Her career has spanned seven decades and earned an unsurpassed number of performance Tony Awards (tied with Julie Harris and Audra McDonald) with five wins. Lansbury is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her twelve-year run starring as writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the American television series Murder She Wrote (1984–1996). She expanded her repertoire to Broadway musicals and television in the 1950s and was particularly successful in Broadway productions of Gypsy Mame and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.