Actor Piper Laurie, identified for roles in ‘Carrie’ and ‘The Hustler,’ dies at 91 : NPR

Piper Laurie arrives on the Girls in Movie Crystal Lucy Awards in 2009 in Los Angeles. Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who carried out in acclaimed roles regardless of at one level abandoning appearing altogether, died early Saturday.

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Piper Laurie arrives on the Girls in Movie Crystal Lucy Awards in 2009 in Los Angeles. Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who carried out in acclaimed roles regardless of at one level abandoning appearing altogether, died early Saturday.

Matt Sayles/AP

Piper Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who carried out in acclaimed roles regardless of at one level abandoning appearing altogether seeking a “extra significant” life, died early Saturday at her house in Los Angeles. She was 91.

Laurie died of previous age, her supervisor, Marion Rosenberg, advised The Related Press through e mail, including that she was “an outstanding expertise and a beautiful human being.”

Laurie arrived in Hollywood in 1949 as Rosetta Jacobs and was rapidly given a contract with Common-Worldwide, a brand new identify that she hated and a string of starring roles with Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, amongst others.

She went on to obtain Academy Award nominations for 3 distinct movies: The 1961 poolroom drama The Hustler; the movie model of Stephen King’s horror traditional Carrie, in 1976; and the romantic drama Kids of a Lesser God, in 1986. She additionally appeared in a number of acclaimed roles on tv and the stage, together with in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks within the Nineteen Nineties because the villainous Catherine Martell.

Laurie made her debut at 17 in Louisa, enjoying Reagan’s daughter, then appeared reverse Francis the speaking mule in Francis Goes to the Races. She made a number of movies with Curtis, whom she as soon as dated, together with The Prince Who Was a Thief, No Room for the Groom, Son of Ali Baba and Johnny Darkish.

Fed up, she walked out on her $2,000-a-week contract in 1955, vowing she would not work once more except provided an honest half.

She moved to New York, the place she discovered the roles she was in search of in theater and reside tv drama.

Performances in Days of Wine and Roses, The Deaf Coronary heart and The Highway That Led After introduced her Emmy nominations and paved the best way for a return to movies, together with in an acclaimed position as Paul Newman’s troubled girlfriend in The Hustler.

For a few years after, Laurie turned her again on appearing. She married movie critic Joseph Morgenstern, welcomed a daughter, Ann Grace, and moved to a farmhouse in Woodstock, New York. She stated later that the Civil Rights Motion and the Vietnam Warfare had influenced her choice to make the change.

“I used to be disenchanted and on the lookout for an existence extra significant for me,” she recalled, including that she by no means regretted the transfer.

“My life was full,” she stated in 1990. “I at all times preferred utilizing my arms, and I at all times painted.”

Laurie additionally grew to become famous as a baker, along with her recipes showing in The New York Instances.

Her solely performing throughout that point got here when she joined a dozen musicians and actors in a tour of faculty campuses to assist Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid.

Laurie was lastly able to return to appearing when director Brian De Palma referred to as her about enjoying the deranged mom of Sissy Spacek in Carrie.

At first she felt the script was junk, after which she determined she ought to play the position for laughs. Not till De Palma chided her for placing a comedic activate a scene did she understand he meant the movie to be a thriller.

Carrie grew to become a box-office smash, launching a craze for films about youngsters in jeopardy, and Spacek and Laurie had been each nominated for Academy Awards.

Her need to behave rekindled, Laurie resumed a busy profession that spanned many years. On tv, she appeared in such collection as Matlock, Homicide, She Wrote and Frasier and performed George Clooney’s mom on ER.