Barbara Bryne ( Barbara Isabel Birkinshaw; 1 April 1929 â 2 May 2023) was a British-American actress of film, theatre, and television. On stage she appeared in comedy, dramatic, and musical productions of Broadway.
Barbara Bryne was born Barbara Isabel Birkinshaw on 1 April 1929 in London, England.
She studied studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Bryne moved to Canada in the early 1960s. She was a frequent performer at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival (Stratford, Ontario) from 1966, and at the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis, Minnesota) for around 50 years.
Bryne appeared in the original Broadway productions of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George (as George's mother) and Into The Woods (as Jack's mother). She also performed in Sondheim's A Little Night Music in Washington, D.C. She was also a frequent performer at Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater. Among the plays in which she appeared there were Mother Courage, The Glass Menagerie, She Stoops to Conquer, Design for Living, and Pygmalion.
On television, she played "Mrs. Gaffney" on the Tony Randall series, Love, Sidney (1981âÂÂ1983). In 2011 she appeared as Queen Victoria in H.M.S. Pinafore, which was filmed for PBS in late August 2011. Among the films in which she has appeared are: Romeo & Juliet (1993 TV film), Into the Woods (1991 TV film), Two Evil Eyes (1990; "The Black Cat" segment), Sunday in the Park with George (1986 TV film), Amadeus (1984), The Bostonians (1984), and The School for Scandal (1975 TV film).
In 1982, she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actress in a Drama for her role as "Kath" in the first American production of Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane (which starred Maxwell Caulfield in the title role).
Bryne married Dennis Spence in 1953. They remained married for 55 years until his death in 2018. Bryne died on 2 May 2023 in Minneapolis, at the age of 94.