Last Tuesday, Angela Lansbury passed away at her home in Los Angeles at the age of 96. The British actress, who will always be remembered for her starring role in the series Murder, She Wrote, experienced hard times alongside her family involving crime and drugs.
In 2014, Angela Lansbury acknowledged in an interview with the Daily Mail that her daughter Deidre became too close to the Manson family cult:
It pains me to say it but, at one point, Deidre joined a group led by Charles Manson. She was one of many young people who knew him, and they were fascinated. He was an extraordinary character, charismatic in many ways, no doubt.
The Manson family's history of crime is well known. This problem was compounded by the drug addiction suffered by both Deidre herself and Anthony, another one of the actress' sons, who started with cannabis and eventually worked his way up to using heroin.
Off to Ireland
Angela Lansbury and her husband Peter decided to cross the Atlantic and move to Ireland in order to save their two children from addictions and bad influences. "I said to Peter, 'We have to go.' So we moved to a house I found in County Cork. I was drawn to Ireland because it was my mother's birthplace and it was also a place where my children would not be exposed to worse influences," Lansbury told the Daily Mail.
The British actress acknowledged that the decision they made prevented them from losing their children:
It fills me with dread. Certainly, I have no doubt that we would have lost one or both of our children if we had not taken them to a completely different environment.
In the interview, the actress confirmed that her son Anthony gave up his bad habits quickly after arriving to Ireland. Deidre took longer, although she was also able to control her addictions and get clean.
