Did Angela Lansbury Move Her Daughter to Ireland to Avoid Charles Manson?

For more than 50 years, Angela Lansbury proved to be a titan of the stage and screen, starring in movies like The Manchurian Candidate and even singing the title song in Beauty and the Beast.

If you spend any time on Facebook, you might have seen a post suggesting that the actor moved her family away from California in the 1960s because her daughter was getting too close to Charles Manson. That might seem a little outlandish, but many naturally wanted to know whether it was true or not. Here's what we know.

The Facebook post, originally published in 2024, claims, "Angela Lansbury once told a story about her daughter Deirdre, who was falling under the spell of a Hollywood deadbeat. He introduced her to drugs and would get her to steal food and money from her parents for him. Worried, Angela Lansbury decided to move her entire family to Ireland. The deadbeat guy was Charles Manson."

That might sound too crazy to be true, but as it turns out, it's based in reality. As Angela told The Daily Mail in 2014, she, her husband MGM executive Peter Shaw, and their two children, Deidre Shaw and Anthony Shaw, moved to Ireland in the 1960s largely because she didn't like the drug culture of 1960s California.

"It started with cannabis but moved on to heroin," she explained of her daughter. "There were factions up in the hills above Malibu that were dedicated to deadly pursuits. It pains me to say it but, at one stage, Deidre was in with a crowd led by Charles Manson. She was one of many youngsters who knew him — and they were fascinated. He was an extraordinary character, charismatic in many ways, no question about it."

"Something had to be done. I said to Peter, 'We have to leave.' So we upped sticks and moved the family to a house I found in County Cork," she continued. "I was drawn to Ireland because it was the birthplace of my mother, and it was also somewhere my children wouldn't be exposed to any more bad influences. I still have a house there, which I try and visit at least once a year. So I refused all work for a year and simply kept house."

Some contemporaneous reports suggest that Angela actually made the move in the early 1970s, but regardless, it seems like her main motivation was the drug culture of California. Whether it was Charles Manson specifically that she was concerned about is less clear, but she clearly wanted to get her family to a different environment.

So, while that Facebook post might seem too strange to be believed, it has a nugget of truth at its core. By her own telling, legendary actor Angela Lansbury moved her family across an entire ocean in large part because she was concerned about a guy called Charles Manson, before everyone knew who he was.