Oscar-nominated actress Barbara Barrie died on Wednesday at the age of 95 with medical aid at her home in New York, USA, three weeks after learning that she had terminal cancer. HuffPost reports, according to UNN.
Details
She was reportedly able to say goodbye to her family with four final words.
"As she was falling asleep, we all just said, 'We love you,'" Barrie's daughter, Jane Harnik, told Page Six on Thursday. "And she said, 'I love you, too.' And those were her last words."
Harnik was reportedly accompanied by her husband, Adam Freifeld, and her brother, Aaron Harnik.
Barrie, best known for her Oscar-nominated role in the film "Breaking Away" (1979), was a "big advocate" of medical aid in dying, her daughter said.
"Throughout her life, even before she became ill with any disease, she always said, 'When my time comes, I just want to take something and go to sleep,'" Jane Harnik told the publication. "She truly believed that it was a human right."
As Playbill reported at the time, the Tony Award-nominated actress was diagnosed in 2014 with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis—a degenerative disease that permanently thickens and scars lung tissue and makes breathing difficult.
However, Barrie did not give up and even spent last summer swimming after undergoing hip-replacement surgery the previous year.
"Some doctors refused to do it," Harnik told Page Six. "We found one who agreed. And he was incredible. [Barrie] wrote to him toward the end of her life: 'Thank you, you made my last summer perfect.' … She loved the ocean more than anything in the world."
Harnik said that the cancer "weakened her in every way," but that she was also "ready to go"—and had even been making a list of candidates to deliver a eulogy and music options for the wake.
More than a dozen U.S. states have passed laws allowing medical aid in dying, including New York, where Governor Kathy Hochul signed a medical aid-in-dying law in February that permits it for terminally ill patients with less than six months to live.
New York votes to allow terminally ill people to die on their own terms10.06.25, 08:50
Barrie's agent, Gary Gersh, told USA Today that she died in accordance with the law in question.
The star of "X-Men" and "Star Trek," Patrick Stewart, has died30.10.26, 00:56