Lynn Cohen, whose career began on the New York stage in the 1970s, died Friday at the age of 86.
A character actress with 112 credits according to the Internet Movie Database, her most prominent role likely remains Miranda’s annoying-but-somehow-still-lovable housekeeper Magda from Sex and the City.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Cohen’s film work included projects notable directors like Louis Malle, Nicole Holofcener, Woody Allen, and Charlie Kaufman. She also popped up in Catching Fire, the second of the four Hunger Games films, which happens to rank eight points higher on Metacritic than any of the other Hunger Games films. In 2005 she played the role of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s Academy Award-nominated film Munich.
More recently, Cohen appeared in small television roles on shows like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Blue Bloods, Master of None, The Affair, and God Friended Me. A turn in the horror film The Vigil debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall.
Theatergoers were more familiar with a different side of Cohen’s work, both on and off-Broadway. She appeared in Kevin Kline’s star-making 1986 production of Hamlet at the Public Theater, and in Macbeth in 2006 with Jennifer Ehle, Liev Schreiber and Sterling K. Brown. Her Broadway debut was in 1990, opposite Vanessa Redgrave for director Sir Peter Hall, in Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending.