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Angela Lansbury, Keith Urban, Marshall Chapman

I miss Angela Lansbury and her show Murder, She Wrote. Is she in any new TV shows or movies?
—Diana C., Arkansas

If you were watching, you may have caught the actress reprising her role as author and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote: The Celtic Riddle. The CBS television movie shot on location in Ireland aired in May. Lansbury also is featured in AFI’s 100 Years ... 100 Heroes & Villains, an American Film Institute television special that aired June 3 on CBS. This year has been a sad one for the 77-year-old actress. Her husband of 54 years, producer and former agent Peter Shaw, died of congestive heart failure in January at age 84 at their home in Brentwood, Calif. Shaw and Lansbury’s two sons founded a production company in 1987 that co-produced Lansbury’s long-running hit series Murder, She Wrote. While she is best known to millions of TV viewers as Fletcher, Lansbury was just 19 when she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as the sinister maid in the 1944 movie Gaslight. She went on to enjoy a long career in film, television, and on stage, including winning four Tony awards. Younger fans will recognize her voice as that of Mrs. Potts in Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Keith Urban is one of my favorite singers and I’d like to know all about him. Does he have a family?
—Sandy H., New York

Keith Urban, who grew up in the Australian farm town of Caboolture, has never married, but he recently dated supermodel Niki Taylor. Although he’s a continent away, he remains close to his parents and brother. His parents, Bob and Marienne Urban, helped get him started playing guitar when a young woman asked to place an ad in his dad’s shop window offering guitar lessons. They let her advertise in return for lessons for their 6-year-old son. His mom answers fan mail addressed to his website, KeithUrban.net. Urban wrote or co-wrote eight of the 12 songs on his second solo album, Golden Road. The singer, who won the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award in 2001, toured this summer with Kenny Chesney. Also in 2001, Urban won the Academy of Country Music’s Top New Male Vocalist award. “I think a little bit more of my Aussie pub influence has come back into my playing,” he says. “It has a certain primal rawness to it and I think I’m starting to let that come out again.”

What is singer-songwriter Marshall Chapman doing now?
— John S., California

She has traded in her guitar for a word processor, at least termporarily. Chapman, who has recorded eight albums and written songs for artists such as Emmylou Harris, Joe Cocker and Wynonna Judd, has written her first book, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller. Instead of an autobiography, the book is more of a roadmap of her musical adventures, which have included touring with Jimmy Buffett and Jerry Lee Lewis. “I started writing out of the blue,” Chapman says. “After 30 pages, I knew I had written something and it wasn’t a song. I’ve always had this idea to write a book where each chapter was a song title and answer that question that people always ask, ‘Why did you write that song?’ I try to answer that question in each chapter.” The Spartanburg, S.C., native will spend her fall promoting the book, which includes a companion CD, and participating in Good Ol’ Girls, a literary musical she co-wrote with songwriter Matraca Berg and novelists Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle. Chapman, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., enjoys yoga, walking and cooking in her spare time.

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