Barbara Barrie death: Oscar-nominated actor ‘ends life with medical assistance’, as tributes paid - The Independent

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The Oscar-nominated actor Barbara Barrie has ended her life with medical assistance, her daughter has confirmed.

Barrie, 95, earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod in 1980 for her role as mother to a teenage bicycle racing champ in the 1979 drama Breaking Away, and also had a storied career as a Broadway star – most famously originating the part of the tempestuous Sarah in Stephen Sondheim’s Company.

Barrie’s daughter Jane Harnick confirmed that her mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and had died at her Manhattan home, adding that her death was medically assisted.

The actor previously announced in 2014 that she had been diagnosed with the incurable lung disease Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, and wrote in a statement at the time: “I have a very full, active life, but what lies ahead is unknown and yet known at the same time. I am living full steam ahead and am now trying to help other people do the same.”

Barrie had a long and varied career, often portraying wives and mothers, notably in films like the 1980 comedy Private Benjamin, where she played the mother to Goldie Hawn, and a maternal magazine editor in the 1979 adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Alongside appearances in TV series including Enlightened, Pushing Daisies and the long-running Nineties sitcom Suddenly Susan, Barrie earned Emmy nominations for guest star roles on Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as the Best Actress prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival for her role in the drama One Potato, Two Potato.

The actor Shaun Cassidy, who starred alongside Barrie in a short-lived television version of Breaking Away in 1980, paid tribute to her on his Instagram.

“Dear Barbara,” he wrote, “thank you for your wisdom, kindness, guidance, humour, and boundless talent. God bless you and your family.”

The legendary theatregoers magazine Playbill also wrote in an obituary for Barrie that she was “a consummate character actor, known for her sharp wit and clever ability to deliver even the most dextrous of lines with natural grace”.

Barrie is survived by her daughter Jane and son Aaron – whom she had with the late artistic director and theatre advocate Jay Harnick – and three granddaughters.