Piper Laurie, Actress In ‘Carrie,’ Dies At 91

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

Laurie died of outdated age, her supervisor, Marion Rosenberg, informed The Related Press through electronic mail, including that she was “an outstanding expertise and a beautiful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

Laurie arrived in Hollywood in 1949 as Rosetta Jacobs and was shortly 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 “Youngsters 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,” taking part in 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 wouldn’t 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 dwell tv drama.

Performances in “Days of Wine and Roses,” “The Deaf Coronary heart” and “The Street 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 performing. 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 Ccivil Rights Motion and the Vietnam Battle had influenced her choice to make the change.

“I used to be disenchanted and searching 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 all the time preferred utilizing my palms, and I all the time painted.”

Laurie additionally grew to become famous as a baker, together 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 school campuses to help Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid.

Laurie was lastly able to return to performing when director Brian De Palma known as her about taking part in 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 motion pictures 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 a long time. On tv, she appeared in such sequence as “Matlock,” “Homicide, She Wrote” and “Frasier” and performed George Clooney’s mom on “ER.”

Bob Thomas, a longtime and now deceased staffer of The Related Press, was the principal author of this obituary. Related Press author Hannah Fingerhut contributed from Des Moines, Iowa.