Frances Sternhagen, Tony Award winner of 'Cheers' and 'Sex and the City' fame, dies at 93
NEW YORK — Frances Sternhagen, the veteran character actor who won two Tony Awards and became a familiar maternal face to TV viewers later in life in such shows as "Cheers," "ER," "Sex and the City" and "The Closer," has died. She was 93.
Sternhagen died peacefully of natural causes in her home in Washington, D.C. on Monday, her son, John Carlin, said in a statement posted to Instagram Wednesday. "Fly on, Frannie," Carlin wrote. "The curtain goes down on a life so richly, passionately, humbly and generously lived."
Sternhagen's publicist confirmed the death and said it occurred in New Rochelle, New York.
Sternhagen won a Tony for best featured actress in a play in 1974 for her role in Neil Simon's "The Good Doctor" and a second one in 1995 for a revival of "The Heiress." Her last turn on Broadway was in "Seascape" in 2005.
She was nominated for Tonys four other times, for starring or featured roles in "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window," "Equus," "Angel" and "Morning's at Seven." In 2013, she played Edie Falco's mother in the off-Broadway play "The Madrid."
TV viewers knew her as played the rich grandmother of Dr. John Carter (Noah Wyle) in the long-running “ER.” On “Cheers” she was the know-it-all mother of postman Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger). The role brought her two Emmy nominations.
More recently, she had a recurring role in “Sex and the City” as Bunny MacDougal, the strong-minded mother-in-law of Charlotte (Kristin Davis), which brought her her third Emmy nomination, and played Kyra Sedgwick’s mother in “The Closer.” Soap opera fans in the 1960s knew her in “Love of Life” as Toni Prentiss Davis, who carried a gun and went mad.
"I have been very fortunate," Sternhagen told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, California, in 2002. "And I think a lot of that is because I'm considered a character actor — which really means you can do a variety of things. It doesn't mean that you can't do leading parts, because I have. But you're not limited to playing yourself."
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