actress
Piper Laurie dies at 91
The actress Piper Laurie hugs her future husband, the theater reporter and film critic Joseph M. Morgenstern (1961). photo
© John Lent/AP
Mourning in Hollywood: Piper Laurie died in Los Angeles. The actress was nominated for an Oscar three times and starred in David Lynch’s series “Twin Peaks”.
The multiple Oscar-nominated actress Piper Laurie is dead. The American, known from works such as the Stephen King film adaptation “Carrie – Satan’s Youngest Daughter”, “God’s Forgotten Children” and “Sharks of the Big City”, died on Saturday morning at the age of 91 in Los Angeles, as her manager Marion Rosenberg confirmed to the industry magazine “Variety”.
“A wonderful person and one of the greatest talents of our time,” wrote Rosenberg. Laurie had not been feeling well for some time, the representative told The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Laurie was seen in films and television series for many decades, for the first time in the 1950 film “Age Doesn’t Protect Against Love” with Ronald Reagan. After a few more roles, she took a longer break. Laurie was dissatisfied with the superficial female roles that were offered to her as a young woman. After her return to Hollywood, she increasingly took on character roles.
In the horror classic “Carrie” she played the domineering mother of the title character, who has fallen into religious madness and blames her daughter for her first menstruation, later believes she is a witch and is killed in self-defense.
Laurie received her first Oscar nomination in 1962 for Best Actress alongside Paul Newman in the drama “The Hustler” (German title: “Sharks of the Big City”), and there were further nominations in the “Best Supporting Actress” category for her roles in the horror classic “Carrie: Satan’s Youngest Daughter” (1976) by Brian de Palma and the drama “God’s Forgotten Children” from 1986.
For her role as the scheming Catherine Martell in the television series “Twin Peaks” she won a Golden Globe Award in 1991 and collected two of her nine Emmy nominations. She was last seen in the 2018 crime film “White Boy Rick” with Matthew McConaughey.
The actress, whose real name was Rosetta Jacobs, was married to film critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Joe Morgenstern from 1962 to 1982; their child Anne Grace was born in 1971.
Variety The Hollywood Reporter