Quote Of The Day: Angela Lansbury On Aging

Angela Lansbury had some wisdom to share on the subject of aging… and she was a bit of an expert on the subject. 

Lansbury is best known to American TV audiences for her role as mystery author/amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the long-running CBS hit “Murder, She Wrote” — a role she didn’t land until she was nearly 60 years old. Lansbury debuted as Fletcher, who solved murders in the coastal Maine town of Cabot Cove, in 1984 and went on to play her for 12 seasons and then a series of TV movies after that, stretching all the way into the new millennium. 

Lansbury also compiled an admirable career on stage and screen prior to “Murder, She Wrote,” earning four Tony awards and three Oscar nominations. She continued acting for years after “Murder, She Wrote” as well, winning another Tony in 2009 and booking roles in “Nanny McPhee” and “Mary Poppins Returns” that had her appearing on screen well past her 90th birthday.     

So if anyone is an authority on the art of aging gracefully, it’s Angela Lansbury — and that’s why she’s the source of TVLine’s quote of the day.

Today’s quote of the day comes from Angela Lansbury: “I’ve never been particularly aware of my age. It’s like being on a bicycle – I just put my foot down and keep going.”

The quote is cited in the BBC’s obituary of Lansbury when she passed away in 2022 at the age of 96. Lansbury said it when asked why she kept working long after other actors her age might have settled into retirement. And it’s a fair question: Lansbury was nearing the average retirement age when she was first offered the role of Jessica Fletcher on “Murder, She Wrote.” 

But that turned out to be a career-defining role for the actress, which goes to show that when it comes to pursuing your dreams, you can’t quit before you reach the finish line. If Lansbury had packed it in before signing on for “Murder, She Wrote,” she would’ve missed out on portraying one of the most iconic detectives in TV history. 

Now of course Lansbury was aware of how old she was, but what she was saying here is she didn’t let that stand in the way of doing what she wanted to do. Society has lots of ideas of what a person — especially a woman — can do once they reach a certain age, but Lansbury never conformed to those ideas, and she had a lot of awards on her mantel to show for it. (She won four Golden Globes and earned 12 Emmy nominations for her work as Jessica Fletcher on “Murder, She Wrote.”) 

The second part of her quote is key, too: She viewed life in her golden years like riding a bicycle, where “I just put my foot down and keep going.” In other words, she took life one day at a time, tackling what’s directly in front of her instead of getting caught up in all the outside noise and worrying about how she’s supposed to behave at her age. Every day is a gift, and Lansbury clearly felt that in her later years, embracing each day as it came and not looking too far ahead and losing sight of what’s really important. It’s that consistency and resilience, it seems, that led her to the greatest achievements of her career — and that’s a lesson we can take to heart at any age.

• “As a character actor I achieved two things. First, a healthy sense of my offscreen self and my private life, which I learned to keep separate from my screen characters. And second, a longevity of career that has outlasted many of the leading ladies who relied on their looks.” — from a 1984 People interview

• “Any actress will tell you that evil roles to play are the best. You can go to town, you know?” — from a 2000 NPR interview

• “Once you’ve played to an audience of people who are enormously appreciative the minute you get onstage, that’s a tonic of the first water.” — from a 2007 New York Times interview

• “Being Jessica [Fletcher] was second nature to me because she embodied all of the qualities that I like about women. She was valiant and liberal, athletic and exciting and sexy and all kinds of good stuff that women are of a certain age and are not given credit for. So to be able to play that gave me tremendous sort of pleasure. And I’m so glad I’ve done it.” — from a 2000 NPR interview