1. Frances Hussey Sternhagen was an American actress.
32 Facts About Frances Sternhagen
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Frances Sternhagen was known as a character actress who appeared on- and off-Broadway, in movies, and on television for over six decades.
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Frances Sternhagen gained acclaim for her extensive career on the Broadway stage.
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Frances Sternhagen made her debut in The Skin of Our Teeth.
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Frances Sternhagen had recurring roles in the NBC medical drama ER, and the TNT series The Closer.
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Frances Hussey Sternhagen was born in Washington, DC, on January 13,1930.
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Frances Sternhagen's father was tax court judge John M Sternhagen and her mother was a homemaker who served as a nurse during World War I She was educated at the Madeira and Potomac Schools in McLean, Virginia.
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Frances Sternhagen attended the Catholic University of America as a graduate student.
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Frances Sternhagen studied at the Perry Mansfield School of the Theatre, and at New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse.
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Frances Sternhagen started her career teaching acting, singing, and dancing to school children at the Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and she first performed in 1948 at a Bryn Mawr summer theater in The Glass Menagerie and Angel Street.
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Frances Sternhagen went on to work at Washington's Arena Stage from 1953 to 1954, then made her Broadway debut in 1955 as Miss T Muse in The Skin of Our Teeth.
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Frances Sternhagen made her film debut in Up the Down Staircase.
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Frances Sternhagen had character roles in the Paddy Chayefsky-written The Hospital, Two People, and Billy Wilder's Fedora.
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Frances Sternhagen appeared as the daughter in the original 1971 Broadway production of Edward Albee's All Over with Colleen Dewhurst and Jessica Tandy.
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Frances Sternhagen worked for many years in soap operas, such as Another World, The Secret Storm, Love of Life, and The Doctors, and she played two roles on One Life to Live.
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Frances Sternhagen is recognized as Mrs Marsh from a series of television commercials for Colgate toothpaste that aired in the 1970s.
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Frances Sternhagen won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1974 for the original Broadway production of Neil Simon's The Good Doctor.
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Frances Sternhagen was nominated for Tony Awards in that decade for her roles in Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Equus, the musical Angel, which was based on Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, and On Golden Pond.
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Frances Sternhagen was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play in 1979 for On Golden Pond.
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Frances Sternhagen portrayed the title character in 1988's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Driving Miss Daisy, which was originated by Dana Ivey at Playwrights Horizons in New York City.
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Frances Sternhagen took over the role after the show moved to the John Houseman Theatre and played it for more than two years.
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Frances Sternhagen played Farrah Fawcett's mother in See You in the Morning.
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Frances Sternhagen may be best known to TV audiences as Esther Clavin, mother of John Ratzenberger's Boston postman character Cliff Clavin, on the long-running series Cheers, which she played from 1986 to 1993.
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Frances Sternhagen won a second Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1995 for the revival of The Heiress.
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Frances Sternhagen received her seventh and final Tony Award nomination for the 2002 revival of Paul Osborn's Morning's at Seven.
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Frances Sternhagen recorded a voice-over for a May 2002 episode of The Simpsons.
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Frances Sternhagen starred in the 2005 revival of Edward Albee's Seascape, produced by Lincoln Center Theater at the Booth Theater on Broadway.
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Frances Sternhagen received Drama Desk Award nominations in 1998 for a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night for the Irish Repertory Theatre and in 2005 for the World War I drama Echoes of the War.
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In 2013, Frances Sternhagen was awarded the Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement.
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Frances Sternhagen is included in the New Rochelle Walk of Fame.
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Frances Sternhagen was a longtime resident of New Rochelle, New York.
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Frances Sternhagen died at her home on November 27,2023, at the age of 93.