PIPER LAURIE Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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PIPER LAURIE

Name: Piper Laurie                                                                         
Birth name: Rosetta Jacobs                                                                 
Born: 22 January 1932 Detroit, Michigan, U.S.                                             
                                                                                           
Piper Laurie (born January 22, 1932) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning   
American actress.                                                                         
                                                                                           
Laurie was born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Jewish               
parents Charlotte Sadie (nee Alperin) and Alfred Jacobs, a furniture dealer.               
She moved to Los Angeles when she was young. 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.                     
                                                                                           
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 wouldn't         
star in another Broadway production for 37 years, when she appeared in Lincoln             
Center's acclaimed 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 raise a family. She appeared in the Australian film Tim (1979)       
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 Carrie, as the title character's         
fanatically religious mother, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award           
for Best Supporting Actress. She first turned down the role because she didn't             
know how to play it, but later realized that it was a dark comedy; she ruined             
several shots because she couldn't stop laughing. 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 Mind, Will & Grace, and           
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She returned to the big screen for                     
independent films such as Eulogy and The Dead Girl.