Angela Lansbury Departs THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL Film; Ralph Fiennes in Talks to Join Cast

As BroadwayWorld reported last month, stage and screen legend Angela Lansbury was in talks to join Wes Anderson's THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL. Today, IndieWire reports that Lansbury, who will be performing in Australia's DRIVING MISS DAISY opposite James Earl Jones, will no longer be a part of the film; Ralph Fiennes, Bill Murray and Jude Law are all reportedly close to deals.

Lansbury has enjoyed an unprecedented career, first as a star of motion pictures, and then as an award-winning stage actor in New York and London. She appeared as Madame Armfeldt in the 2009 revival of A Little Night Music, and before that as Madame Arcati in the 2009 revival of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, for which she won her fifth Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. She performed in 2006 in Terrence McNally's Deuce, for which she was also nominated for a Tony Award. She made her Broadway debut in 1957 as Bert Lahr's wife in Hotel Paradiso.

In 1960, she returned to Broadway as Joan Plowright's mother in the season's most acclaimed drama, A Taste of Honey, by Shelagh Delaney. A year later, she starred in her first musical, Anyone Can Whistle. Lansbury returned to Broadway in triumph in 1966 in Mame, for which she won her first Tony Award. She received others as the Madwoman of Chaillot in Dear World (1968), as Mama Rose in the 1974 revival of Gypsy and as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd (1979). From 1984-1996 she starred as Jessica Fletcher, mystery-writing amateur sleuth, on "Murder, She Wrote," the longest-running detective drama series in the history of television, a role that won her four Golden Globe Awards. In 1994, Queen Elizabeth named her a Commander of the British Empire, and in 2000 she received the Kennedy Center Honors.

The film is set to begin production shortly.

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