Actress Piper Laurie died this Saturday (14) at the age of 91. The information was confirmed by the artist’s agent, Marion Rosenberg, to Variety magazine. The cause of death was not revealed.
Laurie has had a career marked by major roles in film and television. On the big screen, she shaped generations with roles in the 1961 films “Corruption Challenge” and 1976’s “Carrie the Stranger,” which earned her two Oscar nominations. She also competed for the award for the 1987 drama “Sons of Silence,” but never won the statuette.
The actress is also known on television for her work in the series “Twin Peaks,” created by David Lynch and Mark Frost in the 1990s. In the production, she played Catherine Martell, a member of the elite of the city in which the story takes place and who drove the region’s conspiracies.
She received two Emmy nominations for this role, but first won the award in 1984. That year, the organization named her “Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Television Special” thanks to her role in “The Promise”. His last nomination for the The award came in 1999 for his role in the series “Frasier”.
Laurie was born in 1932 and retired from her acting career in the mid1960s due to lack of opportunities. Even after her Oscar nomination for “Breakthrough,” where she shone as the young alcoholic who accompanies Paul Newman’s character, she decided to give it all up and start a family. During this time she also shone in “Famintas de Amor” from 1957, also with Newman and directed by Robert Wise.
Since she no longer had a place in the industry, she quit a permanent contract with Universal and married Joseph Morgenstern, a writer who would also work in the industry as a film critic.
The difficulties disappeared in the 1970s when he returned with a series of grueling projects. Starting with the revival of “The Glass Zoo” on Broadway and a collaboration for the children’s series “Nova” on the American channel PBS.
Interestingly, the two biggest roles that brought her back to the Oscars were mothers: in Carrie, she played the menacing matriarch who controlled her daughter with telekinetic powers, played by Sissy Spacek. In “Sons of Silence” she earned praise in the trade press for her work as the cold mother of the protagonist played by Marlee Matlin.
She also worked on productions such as The Wonderful World of Oz, a 1985 sequel to Disney’s The Wizard of Oz, and the 1999 TV adaptation of The Wind Will Be Yours She worked with George C. Scott and Jack Lemmon.
His last work was in 2018, when he played a supporting role in Yann Demange’s White Boy Rick. Since then, he has contributed to two podcast series, “Around the Sun” and “Carcerem.”