Frances Foster, a character actress, a stage director and a founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Fairfax, VA. She was 73 and had homes in Manhattan and in Far Rockaway, Queens.

The cause was a cerebral hemorrhage, said Hattie Winston, a friend, who said Ms. Foster was in Virginia to attend a stepgrandson's high school graduation.

Ms. Foster was at the Negro Ensemble Company from 1967 until 1986. appearing in more than 25 of its productions. She won an Obie Award in 1985 for sustained excellence of performance.

The other honors she received included one of the company's Adolph Caesar awards on 1987 and two of the annual Audelco Awards, which honor achievement in black theater: a best actress award in 1978 for "Do Lord Remember Me," and a best director award for 1983 for "Hospice." Both plays were at the New Federal Theater in Manhattan.

Ms. Foster made her stage debut as Dolly May in "The Western Trees" at the City Center Theater in 1955, and her talent proved durable. She won praise for her portrayal of a matriarchal Mississippi grandmother in Leslie Lee's 1990 play "Ground People." Reviewing it when it opened at the American Place Theater, Mel Gussow of The New York Times wrote, "Just sitting in her kitchen, lining the thin soles of her shoes with paper while telling tales of her mid-wifery, Ms. Foster is a moving presence, as she has been in many other plays."

Another critic reviewing the play "You Have Come Back," set in Algeria, at St. Clement's Church in Manhattan in 1988, wrote, "Frances Foster gives such a superb performance as the 103-year-old nurse that it is a revelation just to watch her move about the stage, creating an old Algerian woman out of a few lines."

And Frank Rich of The Times wrote admiringly in 1985 that Ms. Foster was "a big woman" with "a big repertory of comic voices, ranging from a raspy belt to a maternal croon to a ditsy English matron's stiff-upper-register."

Her work in television included acting in daytime television staples like "One Life to Live," "Ryan's Hope" and "All My Children." She also appeared in Spike Lee movies "Malcom X" (1992) and "Crooklyn" (1994) and in other films. She was on the Actors Equity Association council from 1953 to 1967 and an artist in residence at City College of New York from 1973 to 1977.

Ms. Foster, born Frances Brown in Yonkers where she was brought up, studied acting at American Theater Wing in Manhattan from 1949 to 1952.

She married Robert Standfield Foster in 1941. He died in 1977.

She is survived by her husband of 14 years, Morton Goldsen; a son, Terrell Foster, of San Francisco; three stepchildren; six stepgrandchildren, and a sister, Beverly Tate of Far Rockaway.