Angela Lansbury 'Devastated' by Backlash to Comments

After Angela Lansbury said this week that women need to "sometimes take the blame" for sexual misconduct because they make themselves attractive to men, the backlash was fast and forceful. "It is a deeply unhelpful myth that rape and other forms of sexual violence are caused or 'provoked' by women's sexuality or 'attractiveness,'" ABC News quotes Rape Crisis England & Wales as saying. Actress Patricia Arquette added: "It doesn't matter how young or old, how beautiful or homely. Rapists rape. End of story."

Lansbury has now responded to her critics. "There is no excuse whatsoever for men to harass women in an abusive sexual manner," Entertainment Weekly quotes the 92-year-old Murder She Wrote star as saying. "And, I am devastated that anyone should deem me capable of thinking otherwise." Lansbury says she's "a strong supporter of women's rights" and is "troubled by how quickly and brutishly some have taken my comments out of context and attempted to blame my generation, my age, or my mindset, without having read the entirety of what I said." To which the AV Club quips: "Welcome to the internet, Dame Angela." (More Angela Lansbury stories.)