Barbara Barrie, the Oscar-nominated actress known to television audiences as Barney Miller’s wife and to Broadway audiences as a Tony-nominated performer in Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” died at her home in New York City at 95 after a terminal cancer diagnosis, according to a report. Her death was medically assisted, her daughter told The New York Times.
Barrie’s career on stage and screen stretched from the 1950s until last year, making her one of the longest-working actresses in American entertainment. She made her Broadway debut in “The Wooden Dish” in 1955, not long after moving to New York following her college graduation in Texas.
She later told the Akron Beacon Journal in 1963 that the move was driven by romance rather than ambition. “To tell you the truth, the only reason I went was because I had a boyfriend who was living there. We were supposed to get married, but couldn’t right away,” she said. “Since I had gone to all the trouble of moving to New York, I figured I might as well try to act.”
New York audiences and television viewers nationwide came to know Barrie as the wife of the title character on “Barney Miller,” the police sitcom that ran from 1975 to 1982. She also played Brooke Shields’ grandmother on “Suddenly Susan.”
On the big screen, Barrie earned an Academy Award nomination for her role in 1979’s “Breaking Away,” though she lost the best actress Oscar to Meryl Streep for “Kramer vs. Kramer.” She had previously won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for 1964’s “One Potato, Two Potato,” and she played Goldie Hawn’s mother in 1980’s “Private Benjamin.”
Her theater work included a Tony nomination for her performance in the original 1970 Broadway cast of Sondheim’s “Company.”
Reflecting on her craft in a 2024 interview with the Westside Rag, Barrie, who said she had been acting for 55 years, described the slow process of mastering her profession.
“I think it took 45 years to become a good actor. I think it takes that long. You strip away everything. You strip away all the junk. You strip away all the egos. You strip away all the temperament, and you just deal with the person you’re playing. That’s all you have to do, but it takes years to learn that.”
