Picture: Roy Tan
Stage and screen legend Angela Lansbury will receive the 2022 Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre at the 75th Annual Tony Awards this month.
Recognising a glittering career that spans 75 years, the London-born 96-year-old actress will be presented with her prestigious award during Broadway’s biggest night of the year at the Radio City Music Hall in New York on 12 June.
Lansbury took her first bow on Broadway in 1957 in Hotel Paradiso, followed by A Taste of Honey (1960). Her first musical theatre role was in Anyone Can Whistle in 1964. Two years later, she gave a career-launching performance in the title role in Mame (1966), winning her first Tony. She has also won Tonys for Dear World (1969), Gypsy (1974) and Sweeney Todd (1979).
After a 24-year break from Broadway, she returned in Deuce (2007) followed by Blithe Spirit (2009), A Little Night Music (2009) which earned her a fifth Tony Award, and Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (2012). In 2013 she toured Australia in Driving Miss Daisy, and in 2014 she reprised her Blithe Spirit performance as Madame Arcati in London, winning that year’s Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress.
The actress has appeared in over 70 films beginning with an Oscar-nominated performance in Gaslight at the age of 17, and going on to include National Velvet, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar nomination), The Harvey Girls, State of the Union, Samson and Delilah, The Court Jester, The Long, Hot Summer, The Manchurian Candidate (Oscar nomination) and Death on The Nile. Famously the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Lansbury has also featured in hit films including Nanny McPhee, Mary Poppins Returns and the animated version of The Grinch.
For TV fans across the world, Lansbury will always be amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the longest-running detective drama series Murder, She Wrote. Created by the team behind another classic TV detective Columbo, Richard Levinson and William Link, working with writer and producer Peter S. Fischer, the series began production in 1984 and ran for 12 seasons, ending in 1996. Lansbury returned to the role for four TV films released between 1997 and 2003.
Lansbury is the recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Silver Mask for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the BAFTA/LA Britannia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Television and Film. She has six Golden Globes and 18 Emmy nominations. A recipient of an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures, she is a member of the Theatre and Television Halls of Fame and in 2014 Queen Elizabeth II named her a Dame Commander of the British Empire.
Paying tribute to the star, Charlotte St. Martin, president of The Broadway League, and Heather Hitchens, president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing, said: “Angela Lansbury’s contributions to the stage are insurmountable. From her ground-breaking role in Mame to her iconic performances in Deuce and Sweeney Todd, and most recently, in the revival of A Little Night Music, Ms. Lansbury has given us a lifetime of unforgettable performances, and it is a great honour to present her with the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award.”
Angela Thomas
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