Barbara Barrie, 1931 – 2026

Elfin actress Barbara Barrie, who often played “manic pixie dream grannies,” died on Oct. 28. She was 95. Barrie played Sarah in Company on Broadway (sadly, she got no solos), also appearing in The Prisoner of Second Avenue, California Suite, Torch Song Trilogy, Fiddler on the Roof, and Significant Other, among other Broadway shows. On TV, she played Barney Miller’s worried wife, and Brooke Shields’ too-adorable grandmother in Suddenly Susan; from the 1960s through last year, she was also seen in such movies and TV shows as Breaking Away (an Oscar nomination), The Caretakers, One Potato Two Potato, Naked City, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Ironside, Diana (costarring in Diana Rigg’s short-lived sitcom), The Mary Tyler Moore Show (flirting with Murray!), Private Benjamin (both the film and TV versions), Family Ties, thirtysomething, and Pushing Daisies, among many others. Barrie spoke for me when she said of her early years, “It’s quite a circle. You can’t join Equity unless you have a job, and you can’t get work unless you’re a member of Equity. What do you do? Lie!” (P.S. lying didn’t work for me). She added that “Movies were the farthest thing from my mind when I arrived in New York. I weighed 138 pounds (on a five-foot-five-inch frame), had a crooked teeth and a long nose. When I thought of acting, I thought of the stage, nothing else.”