Letters to the Editor: Angela Lansbury, the actress you really wanted to work with on the Broadway hit “Rent,” has a new gig on Fox, where she’s set to play the mother of a young girl in “Gravity”:
When it comes to Hollywood, Angela Lansbury might want to stop making the rounds of the paparazzi.
I’m not saying that I have reason to complain. I know that she will be working with an impressive cast. I know that she will be working with a crew of people like J.J. Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy and others who helped shape the story to make this film. I know that the film will be well-made, and that she will be a part of it.
At the same time, this is the most un-Bette Davis–like job that I can remember one actress being given. To be given the role of a mother of a child who is about to be launched into space, and then cast in a film that has to be done in a month – so much so that the director, Alfonso Cuarón, has to get a script in before Christmas – is simply amazing.
And, I should also add, this is the most un-Bette Davis–like job that she could get.
In “Rent” she is a supporting actress, and one of the few women to play a lead role on Broadway. There are actresses like Jessica Rabbit who have played leading roles on Broadway who do it by staying in their dressing room and playing with themselves in the mirror.
Lansbury is not only a leading actress on the stage, but she is also a singer, and has had several successful albums. She could easily have done what many other actresses have done, and recorded a few albums and gone on to a career.
Instead she chose the way of doing what no woman has done, and she did it with her voice.
Not that I would have wanted her to stay in those clothes and go into space and do a one-woman show, but that’s what we have to ask ourselves. Have we all really done everything we were supposed to do, and have we not