Piper Laurie arrives on the Women in Film Crystal Lucy Awards in 2009 in Los Angeles. Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who carried out in acclaimed roles regardless of at one level abandoning appearing altogether, died early Saturday.

Matt Sayles/AP

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Matt Sayles/AP

Piper Laurie arrives on the Women in Film Crystal Lucy Awards in 2009 in Los Angeles. Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who carried out in acclaimed roles regardless of at one level abandoning appearing altogether, died early Saturday.

Matt Sayles/AP

Piper Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who carried out in acclaimed roles regardless of at one level abandoning appearing altogether in the hunt for a “more meaningful” life, died early Saturday at her house in Los Angeles. She was 91.

Laurie died of outdated age, her supervisor, Marion Rosenberg, informed The Associated Press by way of electronic mail, including that she was “a superb talent and a wonderful human being.”

Laurie arrived in Hollywood in 1949 as Rosetta Jacobs and was rapidly given a contract with Universal-International, a brand new title that she hated and a string of starring roles with Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, amongst others.

She went on to obtain Academy Award nominations for 3 distinct movies: The 1961 poolroom drama The Hustler; the movie model of Stephen King’s horror classic Carrie, in 1976; and the romantic drama Children of a Lesser God, in 1986. She additionally appeared in a number of acclaimed roles on tv and the stage, together with in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks within the Nineties because the villainous Catherine Martell.

Laurie made her debut at 17 in Louisa, taking part in Reagan’s daughter, then appeared reverse Francis the speaking mule in Francis Goes to the Races. She made a number of movies with Curtis, whom she as soon as dated, together with The Prince Who Was a Thief, No Room for the Groom, Son of Ali Baba and Johnny Dark.

Fed up, she walked out on her $2,000-a-week contract in 1955, vowing she would not work once more until provided a good half.

She moved to New York, the place she discovered the roles she was searching for in theater and dwell tv drama.

Performances in Days of Wine and Roses, The Deaf Heart and The Road That Led After introduced her Emmy nominations and paved the best way for a return to movies, together with in an acclaimed position as Paul Newman’s troubled girlfriend in The Hustler.

For a few years after, Laurie turned her again on appearing. She married movie critic Joseph Morgenstern, welcomed a daughter, Ann Grace, and moved to a farmhouse in Woodstock, New York. She stated later that the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War had influenced her determination to make the change.

“I was disenchanted and looking for an existence more meaningful for me,” she recalled, including that she by no means regretted the transfer.

“My life was full,” she stated in 1990. “I always liked using my hands, and I always painted.”

Laurie additionally grew to become famous as a baker, together with her recipes showing in The New York Times.

Her solely performing throughout that point got here when she joined a dozen musicians and actors in a tour of faculty campuses to help Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid.

Laurie was lastly able to return to appearing when director Brian De Palma known as her about taking part in the deranged mom of Sissy Spacek in Carrie.

At first she felt the script was junk, after which she determined she ought to play the position for laughs. Not till De Palma chided her for placing a comedic activate a scene did she notice he meant the movie to be a thriller.

Carrie grew to become a box-office smash, launching a craze for motion pictures about youngsters in jeopardy, and Spacek and Laurie had been each nominated for Academy Awards.

Her want to behave rekindled, Laurie resumed a busy profession that spanned a long time. On tv, she appeared in such collection as Matlock, Murder, She Wrote and Frasier and performed George Clooney’s mom on ER.