Judith Barsi pictured on the set of Growing Pains in 1988, shortly before her death. Photo / Getty Images
Judith Barsi pictured on the set of Growing Pains in 1988, shortly before her death. Photo / Getty Images
Judith Barsi was a rising star in the 80s, appearing in a string of hits including Cheers, Jaws, The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go To Heaven.
But the pint-sized child actor’s young life was tragically cut short – at the hands of her own father – before she had the chance to become a household name.
Born in the US in 1978 to Hungarian migrants, her mother Maria Virovacz started training her for a life before the cameras at a young age, and she was eventually discovered at the age of 5 during an outing to an ice rink.
Judith Barsi voiced the character of Ducky in The Land Before Time.
She was soon earning six figures, with her huge income helping her family buy a home in Hollywood by the mid-80s.
But as her career went from strength to strength, her home life rapidly deteriorated.
Judith’s father Jozsef Barsi was known to be abusive, and for years had made threats against his family. He was also known to drink heavily and was arrested several times for driving under the influence.
In 1986, Virovacz filed a police report, claiming her husband had assaulted her and threatened to kill her, but it went nowhere after officers found no visible injuries.
Then, in 1987, as Judith was preparing to head to the Bahamas temporarily to film Jaws: The Revenge, her father reportedly threatened her with a knife, vowing to cut her throat if she failed to return home afterward.
She returned to the US two months later, but her intense distress and deteriorating mental health was soon apparent, with the child resorting to plucking out her own eyelashes and her cat’s whiskers due to her growing anxiety, according to her agent Ruth Hansen.
In May 1988, Hansen finally saw in person “how bad Judith was”, telling the LA Times the previously “bubbly, happy little girl” began “crying hysterically” before a scheduled audition that month.
Hansen tried to help, pleading with Virovacz to take Judith to a psychologist, who eventually referred the child to social services.
Judith Barsi and Ted Danson appear together in an episode of Cheers.
Virovacz told the authorities she planned to leave her husband and move herself and her daughter out of the family home – but just two months later in July, the unthinkable happened when Barsi murdered his wife and child before setting the family home on fire and taking his own life.
Judith was just 10 years old.
In the wake of the shocking double murder, a neighbour told the Times that Barsi had declared “500 times he was going to kill his wife”.
“I’d try to calm him down. I’d tell him, ‘If you kill her, what will happen to your little one?’” the neighbour said, before Barsi uttered a chilling reply: “I gotta kill her too.”
Meanwhile, other neighbours claimed Barsi threatened to kill Judith and take his own life but spare his wife’s in order to make her “suffer”.
During her short but successful career, Judith appeared in more than 70 commercials as well as a string of hit TV shows – tragically, including the miniseries Fatal Vision, in which she played a daughter who was killed by her father.
She nabbed acting roles in huge movies, and her final roles included voicing the character of Ducky in the The Land Before Time and Anne-Marie in All Dogs Go To Heaven, with both films being released after her death.
Judith’s gravestone bears Ducky’s famous catchphrase. Photo / Barry King / Stock image
In a touching tribute, Ducky’s catchphrase “Yep! Yep! Yep!” was written on her gravestone at LA’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park, and the song Love Survives from All Dogs Go To Heaven was dedicated to the child star whose life was cut so tragically short.
