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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Neil Jordan

‘A real subversive, sprightly granny’: working with Angela Lansbury by director Neil Jordan

Angela Lansbury with Sarah Patterson in The Company of Wolves, directed by Neil Jordan.
Angela Lansbury with Sarah Patterson in The Company of Wolves, directed by Neil Jordan. Photograph: ITC/Allstar

I had two Angelas in my life at one stage. Angela Carter (long gone and greatly missed) and Angela Lansbury (flew out of this world last night, equally greatly missed). There should be a ghost at your elbow, whose only purpose is to remind you how lucky you are.

I would travel over to Clapham Common in south London to work with the first Angela, dissecting her short story collection The Bloody Chamber into interlocking bites and fragments of upended fairy tales that would become The Company of Wolves. I ended up with the second Angela on a sound stage in Shepperton in a forest made of movable trees designed by Anton Furst, financed, somehow, by the producer Stephen Woolley.

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