Piper Laurie (born January 22, 1932) is an American actress.

Born Rosetta Jacobs to a Jewish family in Detroit, Michigan, 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, 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.

Once again disenchanted with the work available, Laurie returned to semi-retirement to raise a family. She appeared in the Australian film Tim opposite a very young Mel Gibson (in which she can be credited in doing the first sex scene on screen he was in), but perhaps her most famous role in her later career was as the fanatically religious mother in Carrie, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She received another Supporting Actress nomination in 1987 for Children of a Lesser God.

Laurie also starred as the devious Catherine Martell in the television series Twin Peaks. Following the character's supposed death in a mill fire at the end of the first season, the actress returned in disguise as Fumio Yamaguchi, playing the mysterious Mr. Tojamura, who would eventually be revealed to be Catherine Martell in disguise. Supposedly the other cast members never knew it was Laurie underneath the makeup, but this is hard to believe.

She also appeared in horror maestro Dario Argento's first American film Trauma, along with the director's daughter Asia Argento.

Selected filmography

* Eulogy (2004) * The Faculty (1998) * The Grass Harp (1995) * Fighting For My Daughter (1995) * Trauma (1993) * Storyville (1992) * Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me(1992) (her scenes were deleted from the final cut) * Twin Peaks (1990) * Appointment With Death (1988) * Children Of A Lesser God (1986) * Return to Oz (1985) * The Thorn Birds (1983) * Tim (1979) * Ruby (1977) * Carrie (1976) * The Hustler (1961)

1932 births | ER actors | American film actors | American television actors | Best Actress Academy Award nominees | Jewish American actors | Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actors | Living people | Twin Peaks actors

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