Barbara Harris, star of Family Plot and Freaky Friday, dead at 83

Barbara Harris, a triple threat actress who made her mark in films like Family Plot, Nashville, and Freaky Friday, has died. She was 83.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Harris died Tuesday of lung cancer in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Harris made a name for herself as an actress in the 1960s and 70s, earning a 1967 Tony award for her performance in Broadway’s The Apple Tree and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her work opposite Dustin Hoffman in 1971’s Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

She made a name for herself on Broadway and in sketch comedy, noted as a co-founder of Chicago’s legendary Second City improv troupe and starring in numerous Broadway shows including 1966’s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. 

Harris was best known to audiences for her work onscreen in films like Nashville, Family Plot, Freaky Friday, and The Seduction of Joe Tynan. In Robert Altman’s Nashville, she charmed audiences with as a ditzy country singer performing “It Don’t Worry Me” and played against type as a philandering psychic dating Bruce Dern in Alfred Hitchcock’s final feature film, Family Plot. Families adored her for role as Jodie Foster’s body-swapping mother in the original 1976 Freaky Friday, while she an impression as Alan Alda’s wife in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979).

The actress left Hollywood for good in 1997 following her final two on-screen performances, nearly a decade apart, in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Grosse Pointe Blank. 

Barbara Harris was born on July 25, 1935 in Evanston, Illinois. She graduated from Nicholas Senn High School in Chicago and promptly joined the Playwrights Theatre Club, a repertory theatre company there. After a sojourn in England with then-husband Paul Sills, Harris returned to Chicago, where she and Stills founded The Second City in 1959, which included Alan Arkin, Paul Sand, and more as original members.

Finding success onstage, Harris also began to guest star on television shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Naked City. She made her film debut in 1965’s A Thousand Clowns opposite Jason Robards. Other notable films included Mixed Company, Plaza Suite, and Peggy Sue Got Married.

She relocated to Scottsdale in 2000 and taught acting for a time before retiring from the profession entirely. She was married to Sills from 1955-58, but never remarried.