Barbara Tarbuck of 'General Hospital' and 'American Horror Story' dies

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 appeared in ABC's popular soap opera from 1996 to 2010, playing the Australian billionaire Lady Jane. Her more recent work was in Ryan Murphy's horror anthology, appearing alongside Jessica Lange as the compassionate Mother Superior Claudia.

Tarbuck was especially proud of her regional and New York theater 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, 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.