Angela Lansbury and Peter Shaw's Relationship: A Look Back at Their Decades-Long Marriage

Hollywood legend Angela Lansbury was married to producer Peter Shaw for 53 years

In roles like Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher or Beauty and the Beast’s Mrs. Potts, Angela Lansbury portrayed strong single women getting things done on their own terms. But at home, she was part of a very happy partnership that lasted more than half a century with Hollywood agent and producer Peter Shaw.

Lansbury, who was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth for her contribution to dramatic arts, was a renowned actor of stage and screen. By age 20, she had been nominated for two Academy Awards, for her performances in Gaslight and National Velvet, and Lansbury went on to win six Tony Awards for her performances in Broadway musicals like Sweeney Todd. Shaw, meanwhile, began his career as an actor, with small roles in films like Bride of Frankenstein, before becoming an agent representing Hollywood icons such as Katharine Hepburn and Robert Mitchum.

Though they were both born in Britain, Lansbury and Shaw met in Hollywood. They married in 1949 and raised three children together. Son Anthony was born in 1952 and daughter Dierdre was born in 1953. Shaw’s son from his first marriage, David, born in 1944, also came to live with the family.

"We had the perfect relationship," Lansbury said after Shaw’s 2003 death, according to the The Daily Mail. “Not many people can say that. He was everything to me: we were partners at work as well as husband and wife and lovers. I don't know how we had such a long marriage, but the simple fact was that we were devoted to one another.”

Read on to learn all about Lansbury and Shaw’s marriage.

The pair had a Hollywood meet-cute

When Lansbury and Shaw met, they were both working actors living in Los Angeles. They were fixed up on a blind date, and had an instant connection.

“When he came into my life on a blind date,” Lansbury told The New York Times in 2010, “we just locked emotionally together, and we never looked back.”

She encouraged him to step away from acting

When they met, Lansbury had already been nominated for back to back Academy Awards, but Shaw had only booked small, mostly uncredited parts in the United States. “He was really not a good enough actor,” she told The New York Times. “I’m quite well known for having said this to him … and he would have been the first person to agree. I said, ‘Peter, you’re a terrific guy, but you’re not an actor.’ ”

Shaw became an agent and eventually became Lansbury’s manager. “He became my mentor, my manager, my everything,” she explained of Shaw, who also worked as an agent for many years, as well as a film and television producer.

Shaw and Lansbury married in 1949

Though the couple lived in Los Angeles, they headed back home to the U.K. for their wedding.

In 1993, Lansbury shared wedding photos with PEOPLE. “We were married on Aug. 12, 1949, in a small ceremony in St. Columbia’s Church in London,” she explained at the time. “My mother, Moyna Macgill, is standing next to Peter, and his father, Walter Pullen, is next to me. Because my father had died in 1934 when I was 9, my brother Edgar gave me away.”

They shared three children

Anthony Pullen Shaw was born on Jan. 7, 1952. Deirdre Angela Shaw was born April 26, 1953. With his first wife, Shaw also had another son, David Shaw, who was born in 1944.

“We made all decisions jointly and we helped and supported each other constantly,” Lansbury told The Daily Mail in 2014. “My career was important to me but our children, Anthony and Deidre, always came first.”

Reflecting back on that time, Lansbury added that she felt she spent too much time working when the kids were very small.

“As soon as I had the babies I went on a diet and I was back in business,” she said. “I do regret that. It was a big mistake. You have to be with your children.”

They moved the family to Ireland to escape a dangerous situation

In the 1960s, Dierdre and Anthony fell in with the wrong crowd. They started doing drugs and were even involved with the Manson family.

“It started with cannabis but moved on to heroin,” Lansbury told The Daily Mail in 2014. “There were factions up in the hills above Malibu that were dedicated to deadly pursuits. It pains me to say it but, at one stage, Deidre was in with a crowd led by Charles Manson. She was one of many youngsters who knew him — and they were fascinated. He was an extraordinary character, charismatic in many ways, no question about it.”

The couple purchased a house in Ireland and moved the family there to distance the kids from Los Angeles. “I was drawn to Ireland because it was the birthplace of my mother and it was also somewhere my children wouldn't be exposed to any more bad influences,” Lanbury said. “I refused all work for a year and simply kept house. I bought Elizabeth David's books and learnt how to cook properly. It was a wonderful time in my life.”

The time in the remote home helped the kids overcome their substance issues and also helped to bring the family together.

Lansbury has also been open about how difficult it was at that time to find addiction support or guidance for the best course of action. “Certainly, I have no doubt we would have lost one or both of our two if they hadn't been removed to a completely different milieu, the simplicity of life in Ireland,” she said. “We were so very, very lucky we spotted what was happening just in time."

Shaw and Lansbury collaborated on Murder, She Wrote

Lansbury’s most recognizable role was playing the mild-mannered, crime-solving mystery author Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote, which aired for 12 seasons and at times brought in 20 million viewers per episode.

It was Shaw who encouraged her to take her first television role. “My husband particularly felt I should at least scratch the surface of TV,” she told PEOPLE in 1986. “Financially, there’s a tremendous amount of money in it — and without too much work, we thought. Well, that was a big misunderstanding of the facts.”

Being the only lead on a weekly, hour-long drama was a lot more time-consuming than either thought, but they worked on it together, and with their sons.

Shaw, along with Anthony and David, formed Corymore Productions, and acted as producers on the show, along with made-for-TV movies Lansbury starred in after the show wrapped. Anthony also directed 68 episodes of the show.

When asked to compare Lansbury with her character, Shaw told PEOPLE, "It's awfully hard to tell the difference between the two. Angela has that marvelous gumption, and that's one of the nice things that Jessica has."

Despite their success, they stayed true to their roots

After Lansbury’s death in 2022, the kids sold the Los Angeles home she and Shaw purchased in 1985.

Deirdre spoke to the Wall Street Journal about in 2023, noting that the home was small for a celebrity of Lansbury’s fame, because her parents “weren’t into material things.”

"Neither she nor my father came from money, and they appreciated everything they had," she told the publication. "A lot of big stars these days, they forget. But they never did."

They cared for each other until the end

Shaw died in the couple’s Brentwood home on Jan. 29, 2003. As his health worsened, Lansbury decided to withdraw from a Broadway musical, The Visit, to tend to his health.

“And when I say I took care of him,” Lansbury told The New York Times in 2007, “I really took care of him."

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