Piper Laurie

Born on January 22, 1932, in Detroit (Michigan), Rosetta Jacobs (her real name) comes from a Jewish family made up of a Polish and a Russian emigrant. She sadly remembers that at the age of five her parents sent her to a children’s sanatorium for a while to stay with her sister, who suffered from asthma. “There we had to create all our entertainment,” she clarifies. “We had no games or toys. There was no TV or movies. Only books, climbing trees, a swing, and on Saturday they let us listen to fifteen minutes of the children’s radio program if we were well”.

As a consequence of these terrible days, he developed acute shyness. For this reason, years after her, her parents decided to encourage her to speak in public by signing her up for voice-over classes, where she was recruited by Universal scouts, who offered her a contract. After adopting Piper Laurie as a stage name, she debuted with a brief role in the comedy Luisa , starring Ronald Reagan, with whom she had a brief affair, before he dumped her to marry Nancy Davis . Roles in Francis at the Races followed , opposite Donald O’Connor , or His Highness the Thief and Son of Ali Baba , both with Tony Curtis ., with whom he developed a great friendship. To get people talking about her, her company circulated among gossip columnists that the actress bathed in milk and ate flower petals to increase the luminosity of her skin.

However, the studio seemed to have pigeonholed her as a young dimwit, in second-rate movies. She left her job, despite the fact that she earned two thousand dollars a week (a very generous amount) to move to New York, where she takes acting classes at the Actor’s Studio. She gets offers to act in plays that were recorded live for television, such as Days of Wine and Roses , in which theatrical version she was replaced by Lee Remick . “At Universal she was stuck. First of all, she suffered from self-confidence problems, so instead of being myself, I imitated other young actresses, I just talked like them and did their gestures, ”she commented in an interview. “I enjoyed going around with my classmates, but I wasn’t learning anything new.”

He only agreed to return to the big screen occasionally, when he was offered a role commensurate with his talent. Above all, she shines as Sarah Packard, the invalid with alcohol problems who made friends with Paul Newman , in Robert Rossen ‘s The Hustler , an adaptation of Walter Tevis ‘s novel of the same name , about a young man, Eddie Felson, the fast , who tries to get ahead with his billiards skills. “Everything was so dramatic in the film that Newman and I improvised a moment of joy and laughter for Rossen. But then he didn’t use it in the final cut”, she explained.

She did much more intense work than in any previous film, but in 1962 the Academy’s female performance category was especially hotly contested, facing Audrey Hepburn ( Breakfast at Tiffany ‘s ), Natalie Wood ( Splendor in the Grass ), Geraldine Page ( Summer and smoke ) and a Sophia Loren in a state of grace who finally won the statuette for Two Women .

A journalist from the New York Herald Tribune, Joe Morgenstern, lived one of the most beautiful stories that a movie reporter could tell, since he started an affair with Piper Laurie after interviewing her during the promotion of the classic film. They soon began dating, and nine months later, on January 21, 1962, they were married.

Against all odds, the Oscar nomination did not cause him to be offered decent jobs, so he would leave the cinema for 15 years to dedicate himself to his family. She moved to Woodstock, New York, with her husband, with whom she had a daughter, Anne Grace Morgenstern, in 1971. She took occasional television jobs and also took to the Broadway stage to star in a revival of “The Glass Menagerie,” by Tennessee Williams , with Maureen Stapleton .

She did not even want to talk about returning to the big screen until she was offered to play the mother of the protagonist in Carrie (1976), where Brian De Palma adapted Stephen King ‘s first novel . She embodied an unbalanced woman, obsessed with her own interpretations of religion, who has her daughter so traumatized that she becomes the object of ridicule by her classmates. While this one, Sissy Spacek , was nominated for an Oscar as a leading actress, she earned the right to be chosen as a supporting actress, although this time Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight won respectively , both for Network, a relentless world. “It was impressive to work with her, even if you were more or less clear about what she was going to do, she always surprised you with new contributions to her character,” Spacek recalled.

After divorcing in 1981, she moved with her daughter to Southern California, and never remarried. She agreed to play another mother, this time of the deaf-mute protagonist of Children of a Lesser God . Again, mother and daughter competed for the most precious awards in cinema, but while Marlee Matlin took the one for leading actress, she was ousted by Dianne Wiest , by Hannah and her sisters (curiously, that year the best actor was Paul Newman , for repeating his role as Eddie Felson, the quick one, in The Color of Money ).

Since then, he seems to have broken the rule of not accepting any role, and has taken part in numerous productions, some second-rate. She came to prominence on television as Catherine Martell, factory manager in Twin Peaks , who was reportedly killed in a fire, but later reappeared, made up as Japanese businessman Mr. Tajamura, fooling the audience. For this double work he received a Golden Globe.

“ David Lynch called me at my house and told me, imitating the voice of James Stewart , that everyone thought my character had died at the end of the first season. He thought that he meant that she was fired, logically, ”he recalls. “But no, he said to me, ‘Now, Rosie, this is the part I want you to think about. You’ll come back in some kind of disguise, as a man, and you’ll spy and make trouble.’ I chose to be a Japanese businessman, because I was less predictable. But then David told me that he had to keep it a secret. I would do my own makeup, and neither the actors nor the technical team should know the truth. Not my agent, my family. It was important to him.”

He shared the screen again with Sissy Spacek , this time his sister, in The Grass Harp , an adaptation of Truman Capote ‘s novel , directed by Charles Matthau , who also had his father, the famous Walter Matthau , under his orders , and the memorable co-star of this one in great classics Jack Lemmon . In 2011 she published “Learning to Live Out Loud”, her autobiography.

Curiously, Lynch did not remember her when he revived Twin Peaks , recovering most of the original actors. “I made it clear to her that she was delighted to be reprising the character. I think she didn’t fit in because I was more on the light, comedic side of the show, and she’s gone into the darker aspects of the show.”