TORONTO -- You could say Montreal helped ignite Angela Lansbury's illustrious career.

The former "Murder She Wrote" star recalls venturing to the city as a teen to perform a solo stage act that marked her first professional theatrical gig.

"It was in a Russian -- a RUSSIAN -- night club, can you imagine?" the British stage and screen star says with a laugh during an interview in Toronto, where she's blowing away critics with her firecracker performance as a medium in the Noel Coward stage comedy "Blithe Spirit."

"I remember arriving there completely on my own. When I look back I think: 'My goodness, you had a lot of courage, old girl."'

She was only 16 and had to lie about her age to get the gig, performing various characters in Coward's "I Went to a Marvellous Party," a tune with words and music.

She arrived for her three-week stint at Montreal's Samovar Club to find she'd have to perform with a small orchestra. She hadn't prepared any arrangements for them but the pianist helped.

"Thank goodness the pianist was kind enough to realize that I was a kid who really didn't know 'A' from a bull's foot, as my mother would say," says the 89-year-old star.

Most of the audience members were young U.K. Royal Air Force flyers who were being trained in Canada, "so I was at home in a sense," she adds.

Of course, Lansbury went on to a storied career that has seen her win an honorary Oscar, five Tony Awards and six Golden Globes.

She got her fifth Tony in 2009 for her role as Madame Arcati in "Blithe Spirit," which Mirvish Productions is running at the Princess of Wales Theatre through March 15.

She reprised the role last year in London's West End and then again for the current tour that ends after its next stop, Washington, D.C.

Lansbury says she's had both of her knees and hips replaced due to arthritis. But she's able to do the tour and "just about everything" as long she exercises and doesn't "do very much more than the show." (In Toronto, the only sight-seeing she's done has been to the top of the CN Tower.)

In the 1941 comedy, directed by Michael Blakemore, Arcati performs a seance at the house of a novelist (Charles Edwards). She summons the spirit of his late wife, (Jemima Rooper), which wreaks havoc for both him and his new wife (Charlotte Parry).

"It really is a role that I was born to eventually do," says Lansbury. "And it came to me at a time in my life when I needed a key role to send me out into that audience again, doing something which was entertaining and humorous and was also possible for a woman of my years.

"Because I'm no spring chicken, but it doesn't alter the fact that I still want to bring laughter and amusement to a great audience."

Her cast members, who all deliver standout performances, seem in awe of Lansbury.

"Every time we're bowing at the end and I'm watching her do her thing when the audience is clapping and her eyes are damp, I think, 'Just keep remembering this, because this is very, very special to be a part of,"' says Parry.

Lansbury's not sure what she'll do after the tour is done, but "there's a possibility" she'll eventually take on the play "The Chalk Garden" in New York.

"I have to say that today, the theatre really thrills me to be part of and to be involved in. Movies don't interest me, really, at the present time -- unless something extraordinary was presented to me in which I felt I wasn't just somebody with Alzheimer's," she says.

"I just don't want to do that, I'm not going to do that."