She gained prominence and Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her recurring roles as Esther Clavin in the NBC sitcom Cheers (1986–1993) and Bunny MacDougal in the HBO series Sex and the City (2000–2002).

[1] 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.

Sternhagen won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1974 for the original Broadway production of Neil Simon's The Good Doctor.

Sternhagen portrayed the title character in 1988's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Driving Miss Daisy, which was originated by Dana Ivey at Playwrights Horizons in New York.

During this time Sternhagen appeared as Charles Durning's strong-willed wife in Starting Over (1979) with Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh, the acerbic and tough-as-nails Dr. Marian Lazarus opposite Sean Connery in Outland (1981), a turn that garnered her a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, and played roles in Bright Lights, Big City (1988) and Doc Hollywood (1991), both alongside Michael J.

Sternhagen's work as Sheriff Buster (Richard Farnsworth)'s wife Deputy Virginia in Rob Reiner's Misery (1990), an adaptation of Stephen King's 1987 novel of the same name, and her performance as Dr. Lynn Waldheim in Brian De Palma's 1992 psychological horror-thriller Raising Cain garnered her two more career Saturn Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

Sternhagen's later television roles included Millicent Carter on ER; Bunny MacDougal, mother of Charlotte's first husband Trey, on Sex and the City (another Emmy Award nomination); a memorable Willie Rae Johnson (mother of Brenda Leigh Johnson, played by Kyra Sedgwick) on The Closer; and Law & Order, among other network dramas and sitcoms.

In the summer of 2005, she starred in the Broadway production of Steel Magnolias along with Marsha Mason, Delta Burke, Christine Ebersole, Lily Rabe, and Rebecca Gayheart.

[citation needed] Her final film roles included Irene Reppler, one of the numerous local townfolk trapped in a supermarket, in Frank Darabont's horror-chiller The Mist (2007), real-life Joy of Cooking author Irma Rombauer in Julie & Julia (2009), Clearwater Aquarium owner Gloria Forrest in Dolphin Tale (2011) and, in her final screen appearance, Claire in the Rob Reiner romantic comedy And So It Goes (2014) starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton.

Sternhagen met Thomas A. Carlin while in graduate school and was married to him from 1956 until his death in 1991; the couple had six children, four sons and two daughters.