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 love scene on screen with him), 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.
The Faculty (1998)
