The 88-year-old, who is only a year older than the monarch, is still on stage in the West End. She received the honor at Windsor Castle for services to drama and charity. Dame Angela, who left Britain for the US as a child, said: “It is a very proud day for me to be recognized by the country of my birth.” She joins a select group of acting Dames, including Judi Dench and Penelope Keith.
While she is probably best known to television audiences as Jessica Fletcher in the long-running detective series Murder, She Wrote, it’s her performance as Mrs. Potts, the enchanted teapot in the animated classic Beauty and the Beast, that Disney fans cozy up to most.
Born in London, England, on October 16, 1925, Angela began to study acting at the Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art until World War II forced her family to escape the London Blitz and emigrate to the United States.