Piper Laurie, Actress in ‘The Hustler,’ ‘Carrie’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ Dies at 91

Piper Laurie, the three-time Oscar-nominated actress known for her performances in The busybody And Carrie and because of her bizarre two characters and two genders, she turns on the original Twin Peaks, died Saturday morning in Los Angeles. She was 91.

Laurie had been unwell for some time, said her representative, Marion Rosenberg The Hollywood Reporter.

An Emmy winner who was nominated nine times during her career, Laurie spent three years in a sanitarium as a child, broke away from her original contract with Universal Pictures, once spent fifteen years without making a film and starred in the original production – for live television – from Days of wine and roses.

In Learning to live out loud, her candid 2011 memoir, she revealed that she lost her virginity to Ronald Reagan and that she had slept with Mel Gibson when she was twice his age. Laurie wrote the book because “my life had a lot of secrets, and it was exhausting,” she said in a 2011 interview. interview with the Archives of American Television.

After Laurie’s unscrupulous Catherine Martell of the Packard Sawmill was believed to have died in a fire during ABC’s first season Twin PeaksSeries co-creator David Lynch called her and said he wanted the actress to return for season two – to star Martell disguised as a man.

“What kind of man you choose,” she said, he told her. “You could be Mexican, French, whatever you think.” I was beside myself because I had the power to choose my role. I decided I would become a Japanese businessman because I thought it would be less predictable.”

Incredibly, the cast and crew were left in the dark about this. Laurie was told not to tell anyone – not even her family – that she had returned to work Twin Peaks, and her name was kept out of the credits. And so, with a black hairpiece, Fu Sporting a Manchu mustache and dark glasses, Laurie arrived on set as actor Fumio Yamaguchi, to play the character Mr. Tojamura.

“The cast would never get very close to me,” Laurie said. “They were told to respect this actor who had come over from Japan especially for the show and had only worked with (Akira) Kurosawa.”

Laurie said some in the cast eventually began to realize something was wrong — but Peggy Lipton, Laurie noted, thought Yamaguchi was actually Isabella. Rossellini in disguise.

Laurie earned Emmy names in 1990 and ’91 for her work on the show.

Previously, the Detroit native received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for portraying the broken and troubled love interest of pool shark Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in Robert van Rossen The busybody (1961), subsequently received supporting mentions for playing Sissy from Spacek religious-fanatic mother in Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) and Marlee Matlins mom inside Randa Haines’ Children of a lesser God (1986).

At the Academy Awards she lost to Sophia Loren (Two women), Beatrice Straight (Network) and Dianne Wiest (Hanna and her sisters), respectively. However, Laurie said she never believed in judging performances or awards for actors.

More recently, Laurie appeared as the grandmother of a real-life, teenage FBI informant turned drug dealer White boy Rick (2018), starring Matthew McConaugheyJennifer Jason Leigh and Rory Cochrane.

She was born Rosetta Jacobs on January 22, 1932, the youngest of two daughters. Her father, Alfred, worked as a furniture dealer and her mother, Charlotte, was a housewife. When she was six, the family came west and she spent three years in a children’s hospital outside Los Angeles with her sister, who was there for health reasons.

That experience left her extremely quiet, “changed my life and gave me the great gift of imagination because I trusted myself,” she said in her TV Archive interview. When she was finally allowed to leave, “she wanted to create, to be brave, to do something great in the world.”

In high school, she entertained classmates with a comedy routine she memorized for a speaking class and decided to become an actress. At the age of 9, she won a talent show and thus a screen test at Warner Bros.; that didn’t go well, but she got another one at Universal Studios (with Rock Hudson) in 1949, earning a contract there while still a senior at Los Angeles High School.

Her manager renamed her Piper Laurie and she made her film debut in Louisa (1950), in which he plays Reagan’s daughter. She was 18, he was 39. Universal told the press that the fresh face bathed in milk and ate flowers for lunch.

Laurie went on to appear in other films such as Francis is off to the races (1951), Has anyone seen my girl? (1952) opposite Hudson, No room for the groom (1952) – one of four films she made with Tony Curtis – The Mississippi Gambler (1953) and Is it not Misconduct‘ (1955).

All her roles were lightweight, and Laurie wanted more. She told her agent, “They can throw me in jail, charge me, I don’t care what it is. I will never work again until I can do something that I have some respect for,” she says told People magazine from 1990.

He released her from her contract with Universal and Laurie moved to New York.

The roles she longed for were on live television. On Studio Oneshe portrayed a girl who loses her hearing due to an emotional disaster in ‘The Deaf Heart’, directed by Sidney Lumet. That resulted in her first Emmy nomination.

In October 1958, Laurie played the alcoholic Kirsten opposite Cliff Robertson in the original production of Days of wine and rosesdone for director John Frankenheimer for Playhouse 90. She visited drunks on the Bowery, at AAA meetings and at Bellevue Hospital to prepare for the role.

“Miss Laurie comes to the forefront of our most talented young actresses,” wrote Jack Gould in his review The New York Times. Meanwhile, after working with Frankenheimershe “had fallen madly in love with my director, and he was in love with me,” she said in her TV Archive chat.

After The busybodyLaurie has been away from filmmaking for fifteen years when she moved to Woodstock, New York to study sculpture and raise her daughter Anne with her then husband, entertainment journalist Joe. Morgenstern. She also appeared in The glass menagerie on Broadway.

Laurie said she was surprised when De Palma courted her Carrie, and after reading the script, she thought the horror movie was a comedy. “I got the chance to play and act like children do. I could be the mean lady,” she said.

Her video CV also included Son of Ali Baba (1952), the Australian drama Tim (1979) – where she first met and interacted with her co-star Gibson – Storyville (1992), Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993), The Grass Harp (1995), The Cross Guard (1995), Save Grace B. Jones (2009) and Hescher (2010).

Laurie captured her only Emmy for portraying James Garner’s old flame in the respected Peabody Award-winning 1986 telefilm Promise. She was also nominated for playing the wife of Nazi Joseph Goebbels and for work on The Thorn Birds, St. Elsewhere (as a stroke victim and Alan Arkin’s woman) and Frasier (like Christine Baranskis mother).

Survivors include her daughter Anna.