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Frances Hussey Sternhagen (born January 13, 1930) is an American actress. Sternhagen has appeared on and off Broadway, in movies and on TV since the 1950s. Sternhagen was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Gertrude S. (née Wyckoff) and John M. Sternhagen, a U.S. tax court judge. Sternhagen was educated at The Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, and then went on to Vassar College, where accordingly 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 also studied at the Perry Mansfield School of the Theatre, and New York`s Neighborhood Playhouse. She met her husband, actor and drama teacher Thomas Carlin (who died in 1991), at The Catholic University of America and had 6 children with him—Paul, Amanda, Tony, Sarah, Peter, and John Carlin—several of whom are now professional actors and musicians. Sternhagen lives in New Rochelle, New York.

Sternhagen made her film debut in 1967`s New York City high school drama Up the Down Staircase, which starred Sandy Dennis.[5] She has worked periodically in Hollywood since then. She had character roles in the 1971 Paddy Chayefsky`s classic The Hospital, in Two People (1973) and in Billy Wilder`s Fedora (1978). She appeared in Starting Over (1979) which starred Burt Reynolds; with Sean Connery in Outland (1981); and with Michael J. Fox in Bright Lights, Big City (1988). She played Farrah Fawcett`s mother in See You in the Morning (1989), Richard Farnsworth`s wife in Misery (1990), and John Lithgow`s psychiatrist in Raising Cain (1992). Sternhagen starred in Frank Darabont`s suspense/thriller The Mist, released on November 21, 2007. She 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 for which she received two Emmy Award nominations. She also played Millicent Carter on ER, Bunny MacDougal, mother of Trey, Charlotte`s first husband on Sex and the City (another Emmy Award nomination) and in Law & Order, among other network dramas and sitcoms, and worked for many years in soap operas such as Another World, The Secret Storm and Love of Life. She played two roles on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live. She recorded a voiceover for a May 2002 episode of The Simpsons known as The Frying Game, in which Homer Simpson is sentenced to the electric chair. In summer 2006, she finished her 24th Broadway role, then she guest starred on TV`s The Closer, playing Brenda (Kyra Sedgwick)`s disapproving Southern mother.