Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

My father loved Piper Laurie in the TV Days of Wine and Roses, and always spoke of her afterward as his favorite actress.

I think she's terrific in The Hustler, and I loved her on Twin Peaks. I don't take her Carrie work that seriously, but it's certainly memorable.

Nice long life, and a notable, varied career.

Piper Laurie was never a big star, but she was a great actress many times over.

In leading roles in films from her start in1950, her breakout role as a serious actress didn't come until 1957's Until They Sail from a story by James Michener, screenplay by Robert Anderson (Tea and Sympathy), and direction by Robert Wise. Fourth billed behind Jean Simmons, Joan Fontaine, and Paul Newman, she played one of four New Zealand sisters (Sandra Dee was the fourth) at the start of WWII on the make for American G.I.s on their way to fighting in the South Pacific.

She had the shortest screen time of the sisters but received the best reviews as the black sheep of the family.

The following year she broke hearts as Kristen, the sweet young girl turned into a pathetic alcoholic by her husband (Cliff Robertson) in the Playhouse 90 production of Days of Wine and Roses directed by John Frankenheimer. Then came The Hustler, her first Oscar nomination, and sudden retirement following her marriage to film critic Joe Morgenstern.

Following her comeback to another Oscar nomination for Carrie fifteen years later, she scored again in the 1980 Australian film, Tim, as an older woman in love with a mentally challenged young Mel Gibson. Three years later she was nominated for a Golden Globe along with co-stars Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Simmons for Best Supporting Actress in a TV movie or miniseries for The Thorn Birds, losing to Stanwyck. Seven years later she won that award for Twin Peaks.

Since then, she worked fairly consistently until her death.

She overcame her 1950s starlet status to become quite a formidable actress during the 1970s and beyond both on the big and small screen. Her big screen comeback Carrie, and later Twin Peaks on tv, provided her cult status.

R.I.P.