00:00 Piper Laurie, the celebrated actress known for her chilling portrayal of the overbearingly
00:05 religious mother in Carrie and for playing Paul Newman's down-in-the-dumps girlfriend
00:10 in The Hustler, has died at 91, her manager said.
00:14 Laurie died early Saturday in Los Angeles, her manager,
00:19 Marion Rosenberg, confirmed to CNN. No cause of death was provided.
00:26 Laurie will be remembered as "one of the finest actresses of her generation
00:30 and a superb human being," Rosenberg said.
00:33 Turner Classic Movies, which, like CNN, is part of Warner Bros. Discovery,
00:40 called Laurie "one of the most celebrated and formidable actresses of the last half-century."
00:45 The network praised her full-blooded performances as "flawed, often ferocious women."
00:53 Though she began as a teen starlet in the 1950s, Laurie took a prolonged hiatus from Hollywood
00:59 after becoming disillusioned by the industry's treatment of her as a young actress and the
01:04 flatness of the female role she was offered. When she re-emerged more than a decade later,
01:11 she quickly re-established herself through striking embodiments of complex—and
01:15 sometimes tormented—women. Critics and colleagues took note.
01:21 Laurie received Oscar nominations for her riveting performances in "The Hustler" (1961)
01:27 and "Carrie" (1976). Her third nomination was for her portrayal of a remorseful mother in
01:35 "Children of a Lesser God" (1986). She was awarded a Golden Globe for her performance
01:42 as a vengeful mill owner in television's "Twin Peaks," in addition to two Emmy nominations.
01:49 Born as Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit in 1932, she assumed the name Piper Laurie at the urging of
01:56 a manager when she began professionally acting, she wrote in her memoir, "Learning to Live Out
02:02 Loud." After signing a contract with Universal International, now Universal Studios, at age 17,
02:10 Laurie starred opposite actors including Newman, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, and Ronald Reagan.
02:18 "It would be a very long time before life would teach me that it was okay to fight for what I
02:23 wanted. At 17, I still thought that being a good person and working hard were enough,"
02:29 she wrote in her memoir. The disillusionment set in almost immediately, she recalled.
02:35 In her first role, as the teenage daughter of Reagan's character in "Louisa" (1950),
02:42 Laurie wrote that "every line and moment for the girl seemed like a cartoon."
02:48 She added, "I kept trying to think of ways to make her real for myself,
02:53 but it was a constant struggle on the set. Every role I played was the same girl,
02:58 no matter whether my co-star was Rock Hudson or Tony Curtis or Rory Cahoon,"
03:04 Laurie told The New York Times in 1977, referring to the films she made under the contract.
03:11 She was innocent, sexual, simple, the less intelligent, the better, and complexity was
03:17 forbidden, and always slender. In the mid-1950s, Laurie broke her contract with Universal,
03:25 only to struggle to get the Hollywood roles she wanted. Instead, she turned to television movies
03:32 and series. "It was one thing to finally break free from the studio that had owned me since I
03:38 was 17. It was another thing entirely to put the image Universal had created behind me,"
03:44 she wrote in the memoir. She returned briefly to the silver screen in 1961 with "The Hustler"
03:51 before stepping back from Hollywood films for more than a decade, finally returning in 1976
03:58 with her tormenting portrayal of Margaret White, the fanatically evangelical mother, in "Carrie."
04:05 Laurie said that filming "Carrie" was the first time she had felt she would actually have fun
04:10 on a movie set. "It was a very sweet and sentimental time for me.
04:15 I felt so welcomed by the crew, a few of whom I had known before. I felt embraced by everyone
04:23 and especially free to do the work," Laurie wrote in her memoir.
04:27 Laurie married film critic Joe Morgenstern in the early 1960s, and the couple later divorced.
04:35 They share a daughter.
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