How ‘Carrie’ Brought Piper Laurie Back to Hollywood After a Decade Away

CARRIE, Piper Laurie, 1976 — Everett Collection

What To Know

Piper Laurie had already enjoyed a successful early career in Hollywood before taking a decade-long hiatus.
Laurie originally left Hollywood in the 1960s after earning an Oscar nomination for ‘The Hustler,’ choosing to focus on her family life.
Her acclaimed comeback in ‘Carrie’ earned her Academy Award.

If you grew up watching horror movies back in the ’70s, chances are pretty darn good that you remember Piper Laurie‘s turn as Margaret White, the downright terrifying, puritanical mother to Sissy Spacek‘s shy teenager in the 1976 film adaptation of Stephen King‘s Carrie.

In that movie, Laurie practically stole every single scene she was in. For a lot of younger filmgoers at the time, that memorable performance was the first time they’d ever seen Laurie on-screen, big or small. But here’s the thing: Carrie wasn’t the start of her career. Not by a long shot. It was actually something of a mid-life comeback after she had left Hollywood for more than a decade.

Born Rosetta Jacobs back in 1932, she was a terribly shy kid. When she was just six years old, she spent three years in a children’s asylum outside Los Angeles accompanying her sister, who was there for health reasons. Talking to the Archive of American Television, she said that experience “changed my life and gave me the great gift of imagination because I relied on myself”. When she finally was allowed to leave, she “wanted to create, be brave, do something wonderful in the world.”

THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF, Piper Laurie, Tony Curtis, 1951

Everett Collection

Wasting no time, Laurie made her stage debut when she was just 11 years old. And, by the time she was 17, Universal Studios had offered to put her to work, signing her to a studio contract and changing her name to Piper Laurie. She made her big screen debut in the 1950 comedy Louisa and even briefly dated her costar, Ronald Reagan. Throughout the ’50s, Universal soon had her playing alongside big stars like Tony Curtis in pictures such as 1954’s Johnny Dark.

Somewhere along the way, however, Laurie got tired of the lightweight parts being offered her. So, she did something pretty darn bold. She broke her Universal contract, hoping that she might be able to find some serious acting roles. She headed out to New York and proved she had the dramatic chops on live television, starring in an early TV version of Days of Wine and Roses.

Her decision clearly must have paid off because just a few years later, she found herself delivering an Oscar-nominated performance opposite Paul Newman in 1961’s The Hustler. But then, she did something else that was pretty darn brave: She decided to walk away from it all. After marrying film critic Joe Morgenstern, the two newlyweds moved out to Woodstock, New York and settled down to raise their daughter.

CARRIE, from left: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, 1976

Everett Collection

It was only when an agent sent her the script for Carrie, that Laurie felt compelled to return to the craft that she had left behind. Upon first reading the script, she thought the whole thing was wildly over-the-top and was convinced that director Brian De Palma was actually making a comedy. In those early rehearsals, she really struggled to get inside the mind of her character. However, once she got on set and visited with the director, well, we all know the chilling, unforgettable performance she delivered next. Audiences and film critics alike were equally horrified, delighted, and amazed, and it earned Laurie both an Academy Award and Golden Globe nomination.

Here’s what her Carrie co-star Sissy Spacek told ComingSoon.net in 2017 about Laurie’s nuanced performance as her fanatical mother: “Piper Laurie was just outrageously brilliant! My performance would have been nothing without Piper. We just had a magical connection. She was always very gracious; she was always well prepared, everyone was always shocked and thrilled with the choices she made.”

Spelling Entertainment / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Acting in Carrie gave Laurie the freedom to act strictly on her own terms for the rest of her life. She followed it up with Ruby in 1977 and starred opposite a young Mel Gibson in the 1979 Australian drama Tim. She divorced in the early ’80s, moved out to California, and kept right on working. She even snagged a third Oscar nomination for 1986’s Children of a Lesser God. Additionally, television viewers loved seeing her pop up on shows like The Twilight Zone, Murder, She Wrote, and of course, as the scheming Catherine Martell in David Lynch‘s Twin Peaks.