Barbara Barrie

Born in Chicago and raised in Texas, Barrie graduated from Corpus Christi Senior High School. In 1952, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

After endless stage and television work, Barrie received a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for her performance in the ground-breaking racial drama One Potato, Two Potato (1964), as Julie, a young, white mother who marries a black man after she and her daughter are abandoned by her husband.

Received a 1971 Tony nomination as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance in Stephen Sondheim's "Company," and is also featured on the landmark documentary by D.A. Pennebaker on the making of the show's cast album.

The following decade, Barrie portrayed Evelyn in Breaking Away (1979), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and later, an Emmy nomination, when she reprised the role in the television series based on the film.

She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels for young adults: "Lone Star" (1989) and "Adam Zigzag" (1995).

Was in Charleston, South Carolina, making the TV mini-series Scarlett (1994) when she became dizzy and passed out. Taken to a nearby hospital, they did a sigmoidoscopy of the lower colon the following day and discovered that she had rectal cancer. She was treated successfully surgically. She wrote "Second Act" in 1997, a frank and irreverently humorous book chronicling her 30-year experience first with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and her cancer battle.

Was replaced in the role of Yente during previews of "Fiddler on the Roof" (2004) starring Alfred Molina. The production's casting was vilified in the Los Angeles Times as "ethnic cleansing". The revival, however, did quite well on Broadway and ran for nearly two years.

Long married to Jay Malcolm Harnick, founder and longtime artistic director of TheatreworksUSA, the nation's largest company for young audiences and a training ground for some of the more noted names in entertainment, including F. Murray Abraham, for almost 40 years. Jay Harnick was the brother of Sheldon Harnick. Jay and Barbara's children are Jane Harnick and Aaron Harnick. During his tenure, Harnick's company performed for 50,000,000 children and earned Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel awards, the only children's theatre to do so. Jay Harnick retired in 2000 and died on February 27, 2007.