Barbara Barrie made a rare public appearance one year before her death at 95.
Barrie attended the world premiere of the off-Broadway play We Had a World at the Manhattan Theatre Club in March 2025, according to photos published by BroadwayWorld. The Tony Award nominee posed for photos with playwright Joshua Harmon, director Trip Cullman and actors Joanna Gleason, Sas Goldberg and Lindsay Mendez.
Four years earlier, Barrie attended the opening night premiere for the 2021 Broadway revival of Company. (Barrie notably originated the role of Sarah in Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 production, earning a Tony nod for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.)
Aside from her brief theater outings, Barrie had largely resigned from the public eye before her death. She died on Wednesday, October 28.
“On behalf of the Harnick family, I can confirm that her passing was medically assisted in accordance with the New York State Medical Aid in Dying law, of which she was a proponent and advocate,” a rep for Barrie told E! News in a statement.
Barrie is survived by her two children, Jane and Aaron, whom she shared with late husband Jay Malcolm Harnick.
The actress had been diagnosed with rectal cancer in the ‘90s, later announcing that she also suffered from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic and incurable lung disease.
“I have a very full, active life, but what lies ahead is unknown and yet known at the same time,” she told Playbill in 2014. “I am living full steam ahead and am now trying to help other people do the same.”
Barrie continued performing amid her cancer battle.
“If the part came along that I wanted to do, I would do it,” she recalled on a 2024 episode of How Art Changed Me. “I had cancer, and I was in chemo every Thursday. I was doing Anne Meara‘s play at the Manhattan Theater Club … and I told the director, ‘I can’t do that part, it’s too hard. I can’t do it.’ [The director replied,] ‘Yes, you can do it.’ I said. ‘Well, OK.’ So, I would go up to Columbia Presbyterian every Thursday and usually get an infusion, but I was in a hurry.”
Barrie continued at the time, “I had to go to rehearsals, so they would jab me with the stuff and I’d go to rehearsal, and at lunchtime they’d all go to lunch and I would take a nap. That was a, kind of, turning point because I thought, ‘Obviously this work means something to me if I will go through this to get this done.’ And I did. I think that’s because I want to tell my story.”
