I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better performance in a movie than Piper Laurie‘s in the intensely frightening horror flick “Carrie” in 1976. She was so good as Sissy Spacek’s tyrannical and demented religious fanatic mother Margaret White that the character haunted me for years afterward. It earned Laurie a 1977 Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and the only question seemed to be if the trophy would go to her or to Jodie Foster for “Taxi Driver.” Instead, it went home with Beatrice Straight for “Network” despite the fact Straight spent just five minutes total onscreen. It was one of the great robberies in Oscar history.
The story is emblematic of how Laurie, who died of natural causes on Saturday at 91, would go through her career never being fully appreciated for her immense performing talent, a character actress of the highest caliber. She was a three-time Oscar nominee – her other bids coming in lead for “The Hustler” opposite Paul Newman in 1962 and supporting for “Children of a Lesser God” in 1987 – but she never won. She also pulled in nine Emmy nominations but emerged victorious just once: in 1987 for the made-for-TV movie “Promise.”
Laurie’s career spanned an astonishing 70 years and included an eclectic collection of memorable roles. One was her performance as the plotting and power-mad Catherine Martell in David Lynch’s original edition of “Twin Peaks,” which earned her an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globes triumph in 1991. She was also adept as portraying troubled and deranged mother characters, headed by her work in “Carrie” but also including memorable moms in “Children of a Lesser God” (playing Marlee Matlin’s frosty mother) and on “Frasier” as the memorable mother of Christine Baranski’s radio psychologist character. The “Frasier” role earned Laurie a 1999 Guest Comedy Actress nom.
She was one of those performers who made everything she was in not only better but more off-kilter and fascinating. Laurie, born Rosetta Jacobs, was one of the last survivors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, earning a Universal Pictures contract as a teenager in 1949 and working alongside the likes of Rock Hudson, Tyrone Power and Tony Curtis.
But the same idiosyncratic and uncompromising traits that made Laurie such a mesmerizing presence onscreen also served to give her a reputation for being an independent soul (read: difficult) off of it. She felt stifled by the roles she was offered in Hollywood and ditched it for New York to work in TV and onstage. Then after appearing in “The Hustler” in ’62, she stopped doing movies for 15 years, dedicating her energies to supporting the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam antiwar campaign, believing that acting was by comparison a shallow pursuit.
When she did come back for “Carrie,” however, Laurie returned with the proverbial bang. Her work earned raves from critics, showcasing an emotional depth that in lesser hands would have come across as kitschy and high camp. Instead, it painted her character as the ultimate tortured soul, a fire-and-brimstone maniac with a terrifying countenance. Psychosis has rarely played with such disturbing vigor on the big screen (or any other screen, for that matter).
While Laurie continued to work in guest star gigs on TV series and in indie flicks, she was never accorded the grande dame status she so deserved. Part of that may have been by her own design. You have to be willing to play the game by certain rules to regularly be asked back into the sandbox, and there was rarely any indication that she was eager to do that. But the view here is it was the industry’s loss that, over the last few decades of her career, Laurie was never invited to be a part of any higher-profile projects.
As it stands, I think I’m going to go watch “Carrie” again tonight and marvel at some of the greatest acting work ever.
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