Angela Lansbury will receive the Tony Award for lifetime achievement at the 2022 ceremony.
In a career that spans over 75 years, Lansbury has already won five competitive Tonys. After first breaking into movies, Lansbury made her Broadway debut in 1957 in “Hotel Paradiso.” Over the decades, she’d go on to star in “Anyone Can Whistle,” “Mame,” “Dear World,” “Gypsy” and “Sweeney Todd.” After a 24-year hiatus, she returned to Broadway in 2007 with “Deuce” followed two years later by “Blithe Spirit,” and another Tony. She would also appear in “A Little Night Music” and “The Best Man.”
Lansbury has starred in over 70 films including “Gaslight,” “National Velvet,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” “The Long, Hot Summer” and, perhaps most memorably, in “The Manchurian Candidate” as the personification of maternal malevolence. She earned three Oscar nominations for her work. She became familiar to a new generation of viewers as the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and from her work in “Nanny McPhee.”
From 1984-1996 she starred as Jessica Fletcher on “Murder, She Wrote,” the longest-running detective drama series in TV history. She has six Golden Globes and 18 Emmy nominations and is the recipient of an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. In 2014, Queen Elizabeth II named Lansbury a Dame Commander of the British Empire.
“Angela Lansbury’s contributions to the stage are insurmountable,” said Charlotte St. Martin, president of The Broadway League and Heather Hitchens, president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing.
“West Side Story” star Ariana DeBose will host the Tony Awards on June 12.