Late actress Angela Lansbury left words of wisdom about life and work

Beloved actress Angela Lansbury died earlier this week at age 96.  She left behind not only a tremendous body of work in film, television and stage but words of wisdom and inspiration.

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Here’s a collection of her inspirational remarks:

• “Better to be busy than to be busy worrying.”
• “I believe age should not stop you from keeping on.”
• “I never regretted what I turned down.”
• “I’m astonished at the amount of stuff I managed to pack into the years that I have been in the business.”
• “Work in the theater just keeps revitalizing me — it keeps giving me the excitement and the fun of something new coming up and that’s a great gift.”
• “If one keeps one’s health and strength and you’re pretty careful about how you conduct your life, then you tend to hang on for many years.”
• “Jessica [Fletcher, her character in ‘Murder, She Wrote’] has extreme sincerity, compassion, extraordinary intuition. I’m not like her. My imagination runs riot. I’m not a pragmatist. Jessica is.”
• “Actors are not made, they’re born.”
• The theater is magical and addictive.”
• “I think of myself as a journeyman actress. I will attempt almost anything that I think that I can bring off. It could be almost anything.”
• “Bringing humor and bringing happiness and joy to an audience is a wonderful opportunity in life, believe me.”
• “I was a very serious teenager … and I considered the work to be the most important thing and I concentrated on that. I was a bit goody-goody. I didn’t fool around at all, which is a bit of a shame, I think. I’ve missed on a lot of fun, but I’ve made up for it later.”
• “Women in motion pictures have always had a difficult time being role models for other women. They’ve always been considered glamorous in their jobs.”
• “I really don’t know how to relax to the degree that I could just stop … So when something comes along and is presented to me, and I think ‘Gee, I could have some fun doing that,’ or ‘I think I could bring something to that,’ I’ll do it.”
• “I really can’t honestly give any tips [for success] beyond hang onto your dream. Hang onto what you want, what you feel you want to achieve and go for it. We are all the victims of our own talent and our own shortcomings sometimes, and we have to be aware of those things, because they will trip us up and stop us from achieving what our aims are.”
• “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.”
• “We all have levels of performance.”

–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice News