Frances Sternhagen

Frances Sternhagen (born January 13, 1930) is an American actress; she has appeared on- and off-Broadway, in movies, and on TV since the 1950s. Early life and education Sternhagen was educated at the Madeira and Potomac schools in McLean, Virginia. At Vassar College, she was elected head of the Drama Club "after silencing a giggling college crowd at a campus dining hall with her interpretation of a scene from Richard II, playing none other than Richard himself". She attended the Catholic University of America as a grad student, where she met Thomas A. Carlin, her future husband, to whom she was married from 1956 until his death in 1991; the couple had six children. She also studied at the Perry Mansfield School of the Theatre, and at New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse. Career Stage 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. She 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. The same year, she had her off-Broadway debut in Thieves' Carnival, and her TV debut in The Great Bank Robbery on Omnibus (CBS). By the following year, she had won her first Obie Award for "Distinguished Performance (Actress)" in The Admirable Bashville (1955–56).