Frances Sternhagen, the Tony Award-winning stage and screen actor known for playing memorable matriarchs on Sex and the City and Cheers, has died at age 93. Her son, John Carlin, announced on social media that she was in her New Rochelle, New York, home at the time of her passing on Monday, November 27. “Fly on, Frannie,” he wrote, “The curtain goes down on a life so richly, passionately, humbly and generously lived.”
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Sternhagen won a pair of Tony Awards for roles in 1973’s The Good Doctor (a Neil Simon comedy) and 1995’s revival of The Heiress, in which she starred as the widowed Aunt Lavinia opposite Cherry Jones. Over the course of her Broadway career, Sternhagen earned seven Tony nominations and became known for playing major roles on stage that would later become immortalized on film: characters in On Golden Pond, Driving Miss Daisy, and Steel Magnolias that were played in the movies by Katharine Hepburn, Jessica Tandy, and Olympia Dukakis, respectively.
When asked in 1992 if she was disappointed about being passed over for the film versions of some stage projects, Sternhagen said: “Absolutely. As you say, it’s marquee value, and it’s money. I mean, making a movie is a very expensive proposition, and if they can get Katherine Hepburn, they’re going to take Katherine Hepburn.” She added, “It hurts a little, but I’ve gotten very used to it, really.”
Born on January 13, 1930, in Washington, DC, Sternhagen found renown onscreen for playing maternal figures on popular TV shows. She played Esther, mother of John Ratzenberger’s Cliff, on Cheers; Gamma Carter, grandmother of Noah Wyle’s John on ER; and Willie Ray, mother of Kyra Sedgwick’s LAPD Deputy Chief Brenda, on The Closer. She received three Emmy Award nominations—two for Cheers and one for arguably her most infamous role as the meddlesome WASP Bunny MacDougal on Sex and the City.
With her invasive VapoRub techniques and habit of casting harsh judgment on Kristin Davis’s Charlotte York, Bunny quickly became one of the worst women on the HBO series and mother to one of the more debatable men (Kyle MacLachlan’s Trey MacDougal). “Anytime I got to work with Frances Sternhagen was a joy because the situations that they had us in as mother and son were so uncomfortable,” MacLachlan said in 2018. “There was one scene in particular when I’m taking a bath and she’s sitting on the toilet smoking a cigarette and we’re having a conversation. And Charlotte comes in, and of course, Kristin Davis has got the greatest look on her face of shock and disgust and, ‘Now what do I do?’ That was a particularly fond memory.”
In the same interview, MacLachlan praised Sternhagen’s ability to shape-shift into the role, which she would play across three seasons of SATC. “She played this Upper East Side matron and she would come to work in Birkenstocks and jeans and a blouse and straw hat. She was very bohemian,” he said, “And then she would transform into this fantastic character from the Upper East Side.”
Of her performance, Sternhagen told the Los Angeles Times in 2002: “I must say it’s fun to play these snobby older ladies. It’s always more fun to be obnoxious. I have known women like that, and I can imitate them, I guess.”
Sternhagen also appeared in movies including Starting Over, Independence Day, Misery, Julie & Julia, and Bright Lights, Big City. Her final onscreen appearance was 2014’s And So It Goes, opposite Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas.
After starring in multiple theater projects together, Sternhagen married fellow actor Thomas Carlin; they were married until his death in 1991. Sternhagen is survived by their six children.
