Veteran actress Barbara Barrie dies at 95

Barbara Barrie, a veteran stage and screen actress known for her Oscar-nominated supporting role in Breaking Away and her Cannes-winning performance in One Potato, Two Potato, died on Wednesday at her Manhattan residence at the age of 95. Her daughter, Jane Harnick, told The New York Times that Barrie had terminal cancer and that her death was medically assisted.

Barrie's career spanned five decades. She earned a Tony nomination for the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company and appeared in the first runs of Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue and California Suite. Television audiences remembered her as the captain’s wife on Barney Miller and as the grandmother on Suddenly Susan.

For One Potato, Two Potato (1964), Barrie was named best actress at the Cannes Film Festival. >The Times wrote that Barrie “justifies the [Cannes] prize with a portrayal that is perceptively naturalistic. She is timid, worried and, finally, feminine in the extreme as a woman fighting against impossible odds in defense of her love and family.”

In Breaking Away (1979), she received an Oscar nomination for playing the supportive mother of a teenage cyclist. She later reprised the role in a short-lived television adaptation, earning an Emmy nomination for her performance.

Barrie also appeared in films such as Private Benjamin and Judy Berlin, and made guest appearances on series including Law & Order and The Twilight Zone. She authored several novels and nonfiction works, and in 2008 donated personal career artifacts to the New York Public Library’s Billy Rose Theatre Division.

She is survived by her children, Aaron Harnick, a Broadway producer, and Jane Harnick, as well as three grandchildren. Barrie was married to theater director Jay Harnick from 1964 until his death in 2007.