Piper Laurie

Piper Laurie
Laurie at the 1990 Annual Emmy Awards
Born	Rosetta Jacobs January 22, 1932 (1932-01-22) (age 78) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1950–present
Spouse(s)	Joe Morgenstern (1962-1981; divorced)

Piper Laurie (born January 22, 1932) is an American academy award nominee actress of stage and screen noted for her roles in the television series Twin Peaks and the film Carrie.

Early life

Laurie was born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, to Jewish parents, Charlotte Sadie Alperin and Alfred Jacobs, a furniture dealer.^[1][2] Her father was Polish immigrant, and her mother is Russian-American.^[3] She moved to Los Angeles when she was at a young age. She signed a contract with Universal Studios when she was 17, co-starring with Ronald Reagan (whom she dated a couple of times before his marriage to Nancy Davis) in Louisa. She married Joseph Morgenstern (a journalist, critic, and writer) in 1962. They had one child, Anne Grace, and were divorced in 1981.

Career

Dissatisfied with the work she was being offered in Hollywood, Laurie went to New York City in 1955 to work on the live television programs of the 1950s. She starred in such productions as Twelfth Night and Days of Wine and Roses. In 1961 she returned to Hollywood to star opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Sarah Packard, the crippled love interest for Newman's "Fast Eddie" Felson.

In 1965, she starred in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie opposite Maureen Stapleton, Pat Hingle and George Grizzard. She had a featured role in the off-Broadway production of The Destiny of Me in 1992, and returned to Broadway for Lincoln Center's acclaimed 2002 revival of Paul Osborn's Morning's at Seven with Julie Hagerty, Buck Henry, Frances Sternhagen and Estelle Parsons.

In the 1960s, once again disenchanted with the work available, Laurie returned to semi-retirement to rear a family. In 1964, she appeared in two medical dramas, as Alicia Carter in the episode "My Door Is Locked and Bolted" on the NBC series The Eleventh Hour and as Alice Marin in the episode "The Summer House" on the ABC program Breaking Point.

She appeared in the Australian film Tim (1979) - regarded as "a little gem" - opposite a very young Mel Gibson (in which she can be credited in doing the first sex scene on screen in which Gibson appeared). But perhaps her most famous role in her later career was in Brian De Palma's 1976 film, Carrie, as the title character's fanatically religious mother Margaret White, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Twenty years later, she reunited with co-star Sissy Spacek when they played sisters in a screen adaptation of Truman Capote's The Grass Harp.

She received another Academy Award Supporting Actress nomination, in 1987, for Children of a Lesser God, in which she played Marlee Matlin's mother. Laurie also starred as the devious Catherine Martell in David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks. Following the character's supposed death in a mill fire at the end of the first season, the actress (under heavy makeup) returned as "Fumio Yamaguchi," playing the mysterious Mr. Tojamura, who would eventually be revealed to be Catherine Martell in disguise. She also appeared in 1991's Other People's Money with Gregory Peck and in horror maestro Dario Argento's first American film Trauma, along with the director's daughter Asia Argento.

Laurie played George Clooney's character's mother on ER. In 1998, she starred in the sci-fi thriller The Faculty. Laurie then made a series of guest appearances on television shows including Matlock, Frasier, State of Grace, Will & Grace, Cold Case, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She returned to the big screen for independent films such as Eulogy and The Dead Girl.

Awards

Laurie won an Emmy Award, for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Special for her role in the 1986 TV movie Promise opposite James Garner and James Woods. In addition, she received several Emmy nominations: including one for playing in 1981 Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels, in The Bunker, opposite Anthony Hopkins as Hitler, for her role in the miniseries The Thorn Birds, two for her work in Twin Peaks and a nomination for her guest appearance on Frasier. Laurie has also been nominated for an Academy Award on three separate occasions.

Filmography

References

External links

• Piper Laurie at the Internet Broadway Database
• Piper Laurie at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Piper Laurie at the Internet Movie Database