At the most important moment of his career, Angela Lansbury made a choice that no Hollywood award could ever match.
In the late 1960s, Angela Lansbury was already one of the most popular actresses in the cinema. He lived in Malibu, worked unstoppable and success seemed destined to grow again.
Then he realized something was wrong.
His teenage daughter, Deirdre, attended a group of young people who revolved around Charles Manson, in a period prior to the crimes that would make him sadly known throughout the world. Like many children of those years, she was fascinated by that environment marked by counterculture and drug use.
Angela realized that she could not just hope that everything would be solved by herself.
He made a drastic decision.
He left Hollywood, paused his career, renounced his professional commitments and moved the whole family to a farm in Cork County, Ireland.
Years later he would have remembered that moment with great sincerity:
«Display to my husband: "We have to leave." I thought it was the only thing to do. I wouldn't have been watching my children destroy themselves. »
For about a year he refused every new job proposal.
His life changed completely.
No movie sets, no first or red carpets.
He devoted himself to the house, to the garden and, above all, to his children, trying to offer them an environment away from the temptations and pressures they had known in Los Angeles.
With time that choice gave its fruit.
Deirdre managed to rebuild his life, married an Italian chef and later opened a restaurant in California. His son Anthony also found his way, becoming a television director.
Only years later Angela Lansbury would return to the center of the world scene thanks to the success of *The Lady in Yellow*, the series that would make her a television icon for twelve seasons.
But the decision that most marked his life was not accepting that role.
It was the most difficult time to choose to put the family in front of everything else.
Because a career can always wait.
For a parent, instead, there are times when there can change the fate of a child.