Angela Lansbury, the big-eyed, scene-stealing British actor who kicked up her heels in the Broadway musicals Mame and Gypsy and solved endless murders as crime novelist Jessica Fletcher in the long-running TV series Murder, She Wrote, has died aged 96.

Lansbury died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, according to a statement from her three children.

She was just five days shy of her 97th birthday.

Tributes were coming from far and wide for the actress on Wednesday, including from former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull. Mr Turnbull’s mother Coral Lansbury was a distant cousin of the Hollywood legend.

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Lansbury won five Tony Awards for her Broadway performances and a lifetime achievement award.

Born in London, Lansbury later moved to New York and attended the Feagin School of Dramatic Art.

She earned Academy Award nominations as supporting actress for two of her first three films, Gaslight (1945) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1946), and was nominated again in 1962 for The Manchurian Candidate and her deadly portrayal of a Communist agent and the title character’s mother.

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Her mature demeanour prompted producers to cast her much older than her actual age.

In 1948, when she was 23, her hair was streaked with grey so she could play a 40-ish newspaper publisher with a yen for Spencer Tracy in State of the Union.

Lansbury’s stardom came in middle age when she became the hit of the New York theatre winning Tony Awards for Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), Gypsy (1975) and Sweeney Todd (1979).

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She was back on Broadway and got another Tony nomination in 2007 in Terrence McNally’s Deuce, playing a scrappy, brash former tennis star, reflecting with another ex-star as she watches a modern-day match from the stands.

In 2009 she collected her fifth Tony, for best featured actress in a revival of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit and in 2015 won an Olivier Award in the role.

But Lansbury’s widest fame began in 1984 when she launched Murder, She Wrote on US TV network CBS.

Based loosely on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories, the series centred on Jessica Fletcher, a middle-aged widow and former substitute school teacher living in the seaside village of Cabot Cove, Maine.

She had achieved notice as a mystery novelist and amateur sleuth.

The actress found the first series season exhausting.

“I was shocked when I learned that had to work 12-15 hours a day, relentlessly, day in, day out,” she said.

“I had to lay down the law at one point and say, ‘Look, I can’t do these shows in seven days; it will have to be eight days’.”

CBS and the production company, Universal Studio, agreed, especially since Murder, She Wrote had become a Sunday night hit.

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Despite the long days – Lansbury left her home at Brentwood in West Los Angeles at 6am and returned after dark – and reams of dialogue to memorise, she maintained a steady pace.

She was pleased that Jessica Fletcher served as an inspiration for older women.

“Women in motion pictures have always had a difficult time being role models for other women,” she said.

“They’ve always been considered glamorous in their jobs.”

The British-born star was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014.

She was married twice, briefly to the actor Richard Cromwell at the age of just 19.

She later married British actor and producer Peter Shaw. They remained together for more than 50 years, until he died in 2003.

Lansbury is survived by three children, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

-with AAP