Sarah Goldberg plays wanting: women who need to be looked at and are exhausting about it, and she makes them true rather than likeable. Sally Reed in Barry is the proof, and so far the only proof we have weighed ourselves.
Fi1m perspective
In the acting class at the centre of Barry (2018), everyone is desperate to be looked at, and Sarah Goldberg's Sally Reed is the most desperate of them. The writers take her ambition seriously and do not always approve of it, and Goldberg plays both halves of that at once: the striving, and what it costs everyone else in the class. Over four seasons we found her tiring, and then found that we believed every minute of her, which is a harder trick than being liked.
She came to the screen from the stage. Trained at LAMDA in London from 2004, she originated the dual role of Betsey and Lindsey in Clybourne Park at the Royal Court in 2010, and went with the play to Broadway. Screen work arrived slowly: a small part in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), a lead in the short-lived Hindsight (2015). Then Barry, from 2018 to 2023, made the case for her, and it remains the only case we have examined properly.
What she does that other actors do not is refuse our sympathy without refusing our understanding. Sally is narcissistic and driven by need, and Goldberg makes her understandable without making her pleasant. Bill Hader's Barry cannot act; Sally can, and cannot stop, and the show finds its darkest comedy in putting the two of them in the same class. Goldberg has said of the part, "I’ve always said that with Sally, you don’t have to like her. You just have to know her." That is a fair account of the performance and a fair account of what she is good at.
Since Barry she has spread out. There is a supporting part as Claire in the horror film The Night House (2021), a recurring role as Petra Koenig in the third series of Industry (2024), and Sisters (2023), which she created and wrote as well as starred in; Susan Stanley is her writing and producing partner. The Audacity (2026) gives her a lead. We have not reviewed any of these and will not pretend to a view of them, beyond noting that the parts are still ambitious women in high-pressure jobs, and that nobody, so far, has cast her as somebody nice.
Start with Barry. Whether she can hold a series she has written herself is a question we would like to answer, and have not yet had the chance.
Biography
Sarah Goldberg is a Canadian actress. She was born on 31 May 1985 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
She is best known for playing Sally Reed in the HBO series Barry (2018–2023), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Goldberg originated the dual role of Betsey and Lindsey in the Royal Court Theatre production of Clybourne Park, earning an Olivier Award nomination, and later appeared in the Broadway transfer. Her other credits include roles in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), The Night House (2021), The Report (2019) and Industry (2020).
