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By Savannah Walsh
Frances Sternhagen, the Tony Award-winning film and level actress known for playing with memorable matriarchs in Sex and the City and Cheers, has died at the age of 93. Her son, John Carlin, announced on social media that she was at her home in New Rochelle, New York. York. York, at home at the time of his death on Monday, November 27. “Fly away, Frannie,” he wrote, “The curtain rises on a life so rich, passionate, humble, and generously lived. “
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Sternhagen won two Tony Awards for her roles in The Good Doctor in 1973 (a Neil Simon comedy) and in the 1995 revival of The Heiress, in which she played the widowed Aunt Lavinia opposite Cherry Jones. During her Broadway run, Sternhagen earned seven Tony Award nominations and is known for playing leading roles in levels that would later be immortalized on film: characters from On Golden Pond, Driving Miss Daisy, and Steel Magnolias that were portrayed in the films through 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, D. C. , Sternhagen rose to screen fame playing maternal characters on popular television shows. She played Esther, the mother of John Ratzenberger’s Cliff, on Cheers; Gamma Carter, Noah Wyle’s John grandmother in the emergency room; and Willie Ray, mother of Kyra Sedgwick’s deputy LAPD leader Brenda, in The Closer. He earned three Emmy nominations: two for Cheers and one for arguably his most notorious role as WASP Bunny MacDougal on Sex and the City.
With her invasive VapoRub techniques and her habit of harshly judging Kristin Davis’ Charlotte York, Bunny has temporarily become one of the worst women in the HBO series and the mother of one of the most questionable men (Kyle MacLachlan’s Trey MacDougal). I worked with Frances Sternhagen, it was a joy because the conditions they put us in as mother and son were very uncomfortable,” MacLachlan said in 2018. “There’s a specific scene where I take a bath and she sits on the toilet, smoking a cigarette and we were talking. And Charlotte shows up and, of course, Kristin Davis has the biggest look of surprise and disgust and, “Now, what do I do?It’s a really lovely memory. “
In the same interview, MacLachlan praised Sternhagen’s ability to adapt to the role he would play over the course of three seasons of SATC. She would play the role of that matron on the Upper East Side and had gone to paint in Birkenstocks, jeans, blouse and straw hat. She’s very bohemian,” he said. And then he’d morph into a fantastic Upper East Side character. “
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 has also made the impression in films such as Starting Over, Independence Day, Misery, Julie
After starring in several theatrical projects, Sternhagen married fellow actor Thomas Carlin; They were married until his death in 1991. Sternhagen is survived by his six children.
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