Barbara Barrie died with medical assistance at 95.
The Oscar-nominated actress passed away Wednesday at her Manhattan home, her daughter Jane Harnick confirmed. Barrie had received a terminal cancer diagnosis and chose to end her life through medical aid.
Barrie’s screen career stretched across decades and earned her one of cinema’s most prestigious honors. She was nominated for the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role as Evelyn Stohler in the 1979 coming-of-age film “Breaking Away.” The movie, which also starred Dennis Quaid, followed a group of recent high school graduates in Bloomington, Indiana, and won the Oscar for best original screenplay that same year.
Her breakthrough had come much earlier. In 1964, Barrie won the Cannes Film Festival award for best actress for her performance as Julie in “One Potato, Two Potato,” a groundbreaking film about an interracial relationship. She later brought her maternal warmth to television, reprising her “Breaking Away” role in the short-lived series adaptation and earning an Emmy nomination in 1981.
Theater audiences knew her as well. Barrie was nominated for a Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical in 1971 for her role as Sarah in Stephen Sondheim’s “Company.”
Television viewers of the 1970s remember her as Elizabeth Miller, the wife of Captain Barney Miller on the detective sitcom “Barney Miller,” a role she held from 1975 to 1978. She also played Goldie Hawn’s mother in the 1980 comedy “Private Benjamin.”
Barrie’s creative output extended beyond performing. She wrote two children’s books, “Lone Star” in 1990 and “Adam Zigzag” in 1994. She also drew from her own health struggles to produce two nonfiction works about battling cancer: “Second Act” in 1997 and “Don’t Die of Embarrassment” in 1999.
Those books addressed challenges she knew intimately. In 2014, she was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a degenerative disease in which lung tissue becomes damaged and scarred, making breathing progressively difficult, according to the Mayo Clinic.
She shared her life with Jay Harnick, an artistic director who died in 2007. She is survived by their two children, daughter Jane Harnick and son Aaron Harnick.
