Helen Stenborg, stage actress, widow of Barnard Hughes
Tony-nominated, Obie Award-winning actress Helen Stenborg, died March 22, 2011 at 86.
Born in Minneapolis, Stenborg moved to New York to begin her career as an actress at the age of 17. During WWII she was a USO girl and performed for Allied troops in Italy and France.
Married in 1950 to actor Barnard Hughes, they performed together at the Tenthouse Theater, a stock company that divided its time between Chicago and Palm Springs.
In 1999, she performed on Broadway with her husband in Noel Coward's "Waiting in the Wings" in a production that starred Lauren Bacall and Rosemary Harris.
Stenborg's final Broadway performance was in 2002 as Rebecca Nurse in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.
Screen credits include "Three Days of the Condor"; "Starting Over," with Jill Clayburgh and Burt Reynolds; "Enchanted"; and "Doubt." She enjoyed a recurring role on television as an evil housekeeper on the soap opera "Another World."
Hughes died in 2006. Stenborg is survived by a son, director Doug Hughes and his partner actress Kate Jennings Grant; a daughter, actress Laura Hughes, and her partner, actor-director-producer John Gould Rubin; and a grandson.
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