Celebrated Stage Actress Helen Stenborg Dies at Age 86

Helen Stenborg, the Tony-nominated matriarch of a distinguished stage family that included her late husband, Barnard Hughes, their director son Doug Hughes and actress daughter Laura Hughes, died at her Manhattan apartment on March 22 at age 86. Her children were at her bedside.

Born in Minneapolis on January 25, 1925, Stenborg moved to New York after graduating from high school to launch her acting career. She met her future husband at a veterans’ hospital show in 1946 and they married in 1950, remaining one of the theater world’s most devoted couples until Hughes’ death in 2006.

Stenborg’s Broadway career spanned three decades and included A Doll’s House, A Life, A Month in the Country, a Tony-nominated performance in Waiting in the Wings and the 2002 revival of The Crucible. In addition to her Tony nomination, Stenborg received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Drama Desk in 2000.

Many of Stenborg’s best performances were in off-Broadway productions, including three plays by Lanford Wilson (The Hot L Baltimore, Fifth of July and an Obie-winning turn in Talley and Son) and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, including a heartbreaking final scene in which Stenborg read the children’s book The Runaway Bunny to a dying Kathleen Chalfant. In September 2010, at age 84, the actress appeared opposite Malcolm Gets in Morris Panych's Vigil at the DR 2 Theatre, winning the Richard Seff Award for the best performance by a veteran female character actress in a supporting role.

On the big screen, Stenborg appeared in Three Days of the Condor, Starting Over, Enchanted and Doubt, and had a recurring role as an evil housekeeper on TV's Another World.

Stenborg is survived by Doug Hughes and his partner, actress Kate Jennings Grant; Laura Hughes and her partner, actor/director/producer John Gould Rubin; and her grandson Sam Hughes Rubin. Funeral services will be held on April 4 at 10:30 AM at The Church of the Transfiguration, also known as The Little Church Around the Corner, at 1 East 29th Street in New York City. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to be made either to the Actors Fund or The Episcopal Actors' Guild.