Angela Lansbury's Film Career: 'They Didn't Know What to Do With Me'

By Kate Dries  |  March 28, 2014 | 3:40pm
CelebritiesNews

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN, Angela Lansbury –who is 88 years old, people – discussed her stunningly successful career as she returns to the the production of Blithe Spirit in London, for which she won a Tony in 2009.

Lansbury was signed to MGM in 1942, but told Amanpour that never being the lead in any of their films “took its toll on me”:

I finally decided to ask for my release from MGM which I got and was very happy to leave. They just didn’t know what to do with me. They really didn’t have the roles for me which I could play, strong women.

She also spoke movingly about her late husband, choking up as she discussed how she managed to get on with her life when he died in 2003 after they had been married for more than 50 years:

It’s hard to say but I just knew I had to wait and the moment would arrive when I would be able to come up to the surface again and look around and see how I was going to mend this awful kind of rift inside myself. I waited, I didn’t make any moves myself, I thought, “What would he want me to do?” And I knew that he would have wanted me to continue. I just knew that. There was never any question in my mind. But it had to wait before I was able to do it.

It was a movie that finally helped Lansbury do that: Nanny McPhee, brought to her by Emma Thompson. Does Emma Thompson make everything better? (Yes.)

 
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