Oct. 15 (UPI) — Actress Piper Laurie, a three-time Oscar nominee and Emmy winner who starred in a wide range of movie and television roles over a career spanning seven decades, has died, her agent announced Saturday. She was 91.
Her representative, Marion Rosenberg, confirmed to Variety and the Hollywood Reporter Laurie had died following a period of illness.
Born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Laurie is probably best known for her film appearances in the movies The Hustler (1961), Carrie (1976) and Children of Lesser God (1986), each of which earned her Oscar nominations. But that was hardly her only claim to fame — she was also one of the most active and influential actresses during the era of live television drama in the late 1950s.
After being signed to a long-term contract by Universal Studios while still a high school senior in 1949, she was featured in a series of forgettable films until negotiating her way out of the deal, after which she moved to New York to jump into the emerging scene of live television.
Her first Emmy nomination came in 1958 after a performance on CBS Television’s Studio One anthology series in an episode directed by Sidney Lumet in which she played a woman who suffers traumatic hearing loss.
Later that year she won the Emmy for her portrayal of an alcoholic woman in director John Frankenheimer’s live TV production of Days of Wine and Roses for Playhouse 90 on CBS.
Laurie’s television roles then landed her what would become her first Oscar-winning role in the Hollywood classic The Hustler, in which she co-starred with Paul Newman.
At that point, Laurie took a 15-year break from show business to raise a family with her then-husband, writer Joseph Morgenstern, and concentrate on social activism before returning to work in the 1970s.
She earned a second Oscar nomination with her outrageous and terrifying performance as the religious fundamentalist mother of teenager Sissy Spacek in Brian De Palma’s horror classic Carrie.
Over the next four decades, Laurie appeared in dozens more movies, television shows and stage productions, including Children of a Lesser God, in which she had another memorable role as a dislikeable mother.
She earned followings among a new generation of television fans in the 1990s and 2000s with recurring roles on such influential shows as director David Lynch’s landmark series Twin Peaks and guest appearances on Frasier, ER, Diagnosis Murder and Will and Grace.
Her final film appearance came the 2018’s White Boy Rick, as the grandmother of a teenage boy who became an undercover informant for the FBI during the 1980s and was sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking.
She is survived by her daughter Anne Grace.
