Helen Stenborg, an Obie Award-winning stage and film actress and long-time spouse of the late Tony Award-winning actor Barnard Hughes, died on Tuesday. She was 86. Stenborg was awarded the Obie for distinguished performance in 1986, when she appeared in Lanford Wilson’s Talley and Son. In 1999, she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the pyromaniac Sarita Myrtle in Noel Coward’s Waiting in the Wings, a production that starred her husband, Lauren Bacall, and Rosemary Harris. Her last Broadway performance was in 2002 as Rebecca Nurse in The Crucible with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.
Stenborg also appeared on film in On the Hook with Frank Langella and Elliot Gould, Three Days of the Condor, Starting Over with Jill Clayburgh and Burt Reynolds, Enchanted and Doubt. She worked extensively in television, including a long stint as an evil housekeeper on the soap opera, Another World.
She is survived by two children and a grandson.
