Until her portrayal of Paul Newman’s disabled alcoholic girlfriend in The Hustler, Piper Laurie had been a pink-cheeked screen presence who was never offered the best parts. After the film in 1961, she took a 15-year break from cinema before a triumphant comeback as the domineering mother in Carrie.
As a young actress she was so ill used by the studio system that she once complained: “Nobody thought of me as an actress. They just remembered that publicity story [put out by Universal Studios] about my munching flower petals for breakfast. I even thought of giving up the name Piper Laurie [a studio concoction she hated] because I felt there was a stigma attached to it.”
But in her maturity as a character player,