Career
Barrie has had a lengthy career on stage and in film and television. In the early 1950s, she appeared in seven television productions before receiving her first starring role, in the "Wait For Me" installment of the Robert Montgomery Presents series. Her professional theater debut came in 1953, in a Corning, New York, production of The Moon Is Blue, with her Broadway debut occurring in the short-lived The Wooden Dish. She received the award for Prix d'interprétation féminine (best actress — tied with Anne Bancroft) at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival for her role in One Potato, Two Potato, a breakthrough film about an interracial marriage and institutionalized American anti-miscegenation. Her other high-profile roles have been as Susan's (Brooke Shields) grandmother on the sitcom Suddenly Susan, and as the wife of the title character (portrayed by Hal Linden) on the comedy-drama Barney Miller. In the mid-2000s, Barrie played a recurring role on the Showtime cable-TV drama series Dead Like Me. She also starred in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Miniature", alongside Robert Duvall.
In 1970, Barrie earned a Tony Award nomination for her role in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company, in which she played "Sarah", the weight-watching, karate-practicing married friend of the lead character, "Robert". In 1979 she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in the sleeper hit Breaking Away. Also in 1979, she portrayed Mamie Eisenhower in the NBC miniseries Backstairs at the White House.
A near-encounter with Barrie is the subject of Christine Lavin's song "The Moment Slipped Away."
Barbara Barrie also acted as Aunt Margo of the twins (Liz and Jean Sagal) in the TV show Double Trouble in the '80s (1984 to 1985); she also played the part as the blind girl Celia in the episode “Even Stones Have Eyes” on Route 66 (second season, 1962). In 1993 she played Gloria Unger in the television movie The Odd Couple: Together Again, a role originated by Janis Hansen on the original series The Odd Couple.
Barrie is the author of two critically acclaimed novels for young adults: Lone Star (1989) and Adam Zigzag (1995).
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)