Barbara Tarbuck of ‘General Hospital’ dies at 74

LOS ANGELES – Barbara Tarbuck, a stage and screen actress who played Jane Jacks on “General Hospital” and Mother Superior Claudia on “American Horror Story: Asylum,” has died. She was 74.

Tarbuck died Monday at her Los Angeles home, said her daughter, producer Jennifer Lane Connolly. Tarbuck suffered from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disorder, a rare, degenerative brain disease, Connolly said Thursday.

Tarbuck was especially proud of her regional and New York theatre work, her daughter said, including a role in the original 1980s Broadway production of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” Other stage credits included Harold Pinter’s “Landscape and Silence.”

Tarbuck’s films included “Big Trouble” (1986) from director John Cassavetes; “Curly Sue” (1991); and “Walking Tall” (2004).

Besides her work on “General Hospital” over more than a decade, she appeared in dozens of prime-time series including “Dallas,” ”Cagney & Lacey,” ”The Golden Girls,” and “Mad Men.”

Tarbuck, a Detroit native, earned degrees from Wayne State University and the University of Michigan before studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright Scholarship, her daughter said.