BIRTHDATE- January 22, 1932

BIRTHPLACE- Detroit, Michigan

Piper Laurie was born in Detroit, Michigan, on January 22, 1932. Her real name is Rosetta Jacobs, the daughter of a Polish, Jewish Immigrant, and his Russian-American wife. Her father was a furniture dealer who moved his family to Los Angeles, California in 1938. Rosetta was a pretty red-haired little girl, but very shy, so her parents sent her to weekly elocution lessons. In addition to her lessons in Hebrew school, she studied acting at a local acting school, and this eventually led to work at Universal Studios. Universal had signed her as a contract player when she was only 17 years old, and changed her screen name to Piper Laurie. Rosetta was very upset when she learned her new name, since it became the butt of many jokes. She was cast in the movie Louisa in 1950, and became very close friends with her costar, Ronald Reagan. Because she was a pretty red-haired, green-eyed starlet, Universal used her in many pictures, such as Son of Ali Baba with Tony Curtis, Francis Goes to the Races with Donald O'Connor, and Ain't Misbehavin' with Rory Calhoun. The studio tried to enhance her image as an ingenue with press releases that she took milk baths and ate gardenia petals for lunch. Although she was making $2,000 per week, her lack of any substantial parts discouraged her so much that by 1955 when she received another script for a Western' and 'another silly part in a silly movie', she dropped the script in the fireplace, called her agent and told him she didn't care if they fired her, jailed her or sued her, that she wasn't going to act again until she could do something worthwhile. That was the end of her first career. From there, she went to New York to study acting, and worked in live television, starring in The Hallmark Hall of Fame version of Twelth Night, in 1957, The Days of Wine and Roses, with Cliff Robertson, which debuted on Playhouse 90, Oct. 2, 1958, and as Kirsten in the Playhouse 90 version of Winterset in 1959. In 1961, she got the part of Paul Newman's crippled girl friend in the classic film, The Hustler. She was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for that role of Sarah Packard.

That year, she was interviewed by a writer reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, Joseph Morgenstern, and she liked his casual dress and life style, and nine months later, they were married. When she did not receive any substantial acting offers after The Hustler, she retreated with her husband to Woodstock, New York, where she pursued domestic activities such as baking (her grandfather's trade) and raising her daughter Anne, born in 1971. In 1976, she accepted the role of Margaret White, the eccentric religious zealot mother of a shy young psychic girl named "Carrie", played by Sissy Spacek. Piper received her second supporting Oscar nomination for this role. She and her husband divorced in 1981, she moved to Southern California and obtained many film and television roles. She got a third Oscar nomination for her role as Mrs. Norman in Children of a Lesser God in 1986 and won an Emmy that year for her acting in Promise, a television movie with James Garner and James Woods. She has appeared in more that 60 films, from 1950 to the present, almost 50 years of acting, most recently in A Christmas Memory and The Faculty. Ms. Laurie has appeared in many outstanding television shows from The Best of Broadway in 1954, to roles on Playhouse 90 in 1956, roles on St. Elsewhere, Murder She Wrote, Matlock, Beauty and the Beast, ER, Diagnosis Murder and Frasier. Her recent role as Dolly in the Glass Harp drew rave reviews from some critics. Her daughter Anne Grace has made her a grandmother, and though she lives in Southern California, she frequently visits her daughter in New York. In a career of film making that has spanned almost 50 years, one of Laurie's most remarkable roles is that of Mrs. White in Carrie in which she earned an Oscar nomination. Carrie was her first role back onto the screen since 1962.