Estelle Harris, who hollered her way into TV history as George Costanza’s short-fused mother on “Seinfeld” and voiced Mrs. Potato Head in the “Toy Story” franchise, has died. She was 93.
As middle-class matron Estelle Costanza, Harris put a memorable stamp on her recurring role in the smash 1990s sitcom. With her high-pitched voice and humorously overbearing attitude, she was an archetype of maternal indignation., Harris helped create a parental pair that would leave even a psychiatrist helpless to do anything but hope they’d move to Florida — as their son, played by Jason Alexander, fruitlessly encouraged them to do.
The career-defining role came after decades on stage and screen. Born April 22, 1928, in New York City, Harris grew up in the city and later in the Pittsburgh suburb of Tarentum, Pennsylvania, where her father owned a candy store. She started tapping her comedic talents in high school productions where she realized she “could make the audience get hysterical,” as she told People magazine in 1995.
She had stopped pursuing show business when she married in the early 1950s but resumed acting in amateur groups, dinner theater and commercials as her three children grew . Eventually, she began appearing in guest roles on TV shows including the legal comedy “Night Court,” and in films including director Sergio Leone’s 1984 gangland epic “Once Upon a Time in America.”
Harris would go on to appear in dozens more episodes of the “show about nothing.” She seethed over snubbed paella, screeched about George’s hanky-panky in the parental bed and laid out the spread for screen husband Frank’s idiosyncratic holiday, Festivus.
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