By Paul Freeman [1995 Interview]

Piper Laurie has forged her own path in acting. And a memorable one it is.

She signed with Universal at age 17 and was cast in such pictures as "Francis Goes to the Races" (1951) with Donald O'Connor, "Son of Ali Baba" (1952) with Tony Curtis, "The Golden Blade" (1953) with Rock Hudson, "Mississippi Gambler" (1953) with Tyrone Power and "Ain't Misbehavin'" (1955) with Rory Calhoun.

Seeking more challenging roles in meatier projects, Laurie (born Rosetta Jacobs), moved to New York and found them on stage and in television, including the 1958 "Playhouse 90" presentation of "The Days of Wine and Roses," co-starring Cliff Robertson.

She returned to films to portray the physically challenged, alcoholic Sarah Packard, opposite Paul Newman, in 1961's "The Hustler." Her complex and poignant performance earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Unhappy with the film roles she was subsequently offered, Laurie did a bit of television, including "Ben Casey" and "Naked City" episodes, as well as anthology series dramas. Now married to a journalist, she moved to a rural area upstate, where they raised a daughter.

It wasn't until 1976 that Laurie was again tempted to return to movies, this time in the Brian De Palma/Stephen King horror classic, "Carrie." She was terrifyingly unforgettable as Sissy Spacek's fanatically religious mother. For this work, she received another Academy Award nomination.

After her 1981 divorce, Laurie returned to Southern California and has worked extensively in movies and television ever since. She received a third Oscar nomination for playing Mrs. Norman in "Children of a Lesser God" and won an Emmy that same year for "Promise," which starred James Garner and James Woods. She appeared in the 1999 TV movie version of "Inherit The Wind" with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott.

Laurie did guest shots on such hit series as "St. Elsewhere," "Murder, She Wrote," "Matlock," "Beauty and the Beast," "Diagnosis Murder, "Frasier" and "Will and Grace." She played George Clooney's mother in "ER." And "Twin Peaks" fans fondly remember Laurie for her Emmy-nominated, Golden Globe-winning dual portrayals of Catherine Martell and Japanese business man Mr. Tojamura in 1991.

We had the pleasure of interviewing her in 1995, in a roundtable setting, as well as in a one-on-one, prior to the release of the warm comedy-drama "The Grass Harp," in which she co-starred with Sissy Spacek (as her sister), Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Roddy McDowall.

With her fiery red hair, sultry voice, hearty laugh and soulful, lively brown eyes, Piper Laurie remains a charismatic presence, on and off the screen.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
When you began your career, you were under contract with Universal. Was that a good situation, knowing you would be going from one film to the next, with the studio trying to build you up?

LAURIE:
No, I was child and I didn't know what I was getting into, but I was flattered that they asked me to act and be paid. I was 17. And I was a serious actress. I worked hard. I studied with good people. I mean, I had a lot to learn. And I certainly had no technique. But I was very disappointed in the kind of parts they gave me. And I was quite miserable for those six or seven years that I was under contract.

I was angry. I tried everything with my agents. Finally they sent me one script and I read it and it was kind of the last straw. I threw it in the fireplace and burned it up. I called my agent and said, "They can put me in jail or sue me, I don't care what. I will never work again, as long as I live, if I can't get out of this contract and do something decent, that I can have some respect for." It was all entertainment sort of B-movies that made a lot of money. So I was finally able to break the contract. But I was quite miserable during that time.

So I broke the contract. And my parents and my friends thought I was crazy -- all that money, for a young girl. I went to New York and turned down a lot of shows for a long time... until I got a live television show with a real part.

You know, I had playwrights, I read for plays, and they said, "We don't care how good you are, but we can't afford to hire a Piper Laurie and what she stands for," because I was kind of a publicity-created person. I don't know if you have any inkling of that being my past... because people used to know me as the girl who ate flowers. And then at least every month, I'd do something like have a milk bath and they'd take pictures and it would be in the papers.

PCC:
Where did "the girl who ate flowers" come from?

LAURIE:
The very first movie I did with Ronald Reagan, who played my father. Edmund Gwenn and Charles Coburn and Spring Byington were all sitting around the table. And Edmund Gwenn made a marigold salad to impress Spring Byington. He scattered marigold petals in it. And the press agent, whose name was Fred Banker came up to me and said, "I have a wonderful idea. I'm telling all the press that you eat flowers all the time."

And he had a series of luncheons, where I'd sit with the press in the commissary and they'd bring in these masses of flowers [laughs]. And they were good. People eat them all the time now, I understand. They're nutritious. So I went along with the charade -- "Oh, yes. Delicious. Wonderful." But that's pretty much what my reputation was. So I had to really work to change the meaning of my name.

PCC:
As a teen, you appeared in the movie "Louisa," your first film, playing the daughter of Ronald Reagan. What were your impressions of him?

LAURIE:
Well, he was extremely charming, very helpful. We got to go out on the road a little bit to sell the movie, too, so I saw him in action. In those days, we didn't have roundtables [at press junkets]. We had 22-city tours and 52 appearances each day, taking trains and planes and things like that.

We went to a Chicago theatre, as one of the places, and between showings of "Louisa," we did a little thing on the stage. And then we would go to department stores and they'd have autograph parties. And then Ronnie would get up on the counters and make little speeches about how people were knocking Hollywood and that the divorce rates around the country were just as high as in Los Angeles. He was defending Los Angeles. And I think technically he was still President of the Screen Actors Guild then.

He was a delightful person. Actually, I went out with him a few times. And the studio was unhappy, because it didn't look nice -- playing my father and taking me out. A producer called me into his office and told me that I should not do this, that it didn't look nice. And actually, probably at that time, he had aspirations... it was long before he became Governor. And this particular producer wanted to protect him. It was a terrifically embarrassing thing

I was living in New York, had been for many years, when he became Governor. Never could get over that. And he still had a ways to go [laughs].

PCC:
Did you have any contact with him after he became President?

LAURIE:
No. I was invited to the White House with people who had worked with him, but I just felt that it was an implicit support of people who were running for office, that I really didn't agree with.

PCC:
How long was it between getting out of your studio contract and doing "The Hustler"?

LAURIE:
Let's see... it was three or four years. I did live television. I did some plays.

PCC:
And "The Hustler," did you have a sense, while you were making it, that this could be a classic?

LAURIE:
I wouldn't say I knew it was going to be a classic, but I did know... I was in an off-Broadway play. And I was so tired. I kept procrastinating about reading the script. Robert Rossen [the film's co-writer/director/producer] kept coming backstage to see me and gave it to me. And I kept putting it off... and I knew I had a meeting with him about a week from that time. And I put it off. I carried it around with me. And the afternoon that I was supposed to see him, I just made myself sit down in an office where I was and I started to read it. And by page three -- and my character doesn't come in till like the 40th page -- page three, I said, "I'm going to be in this movie." I mean, it was just the best written script I'd ever read.

PCC:
So you had the struggle to be recognized for your talent, then had this acclaimed performance in "The Hustler." But you stepped away after that. Was it immediately after?

LAURIE:
Well, let's see. I made the movie. And I was nominated, which was a big surprise. I mean, I was shocked. I did "The Glass Menagerie" on Broadway [1965]. And then I started getting offers for parts of girls who were crippled. And it was just as bad, in its way. People have so little imagination and wanted me to repeat that part. And I was just disgusted.

I mean, I was so down on the whole idea of being an actress that, when the [Academy Awards] awards ceremony happened, I didn't even go to California. I stayed in New York and had dinner with my husband and mother-in-law around the card table of her apartment and watched it on the telly. And I just sort of lost interest. And then decided to move to the country. An actor, you keep turning things down, people stop asking.

PCC:
So how did you decide when the time would be right to come back?

LAURIE:
It was a feeling I had that it would be fun to act again that coincided with Brian De Palma talking to people who just happened to think of me as an idea for the mother in "Carrie." I had a five-year-old child, when I did "Carrie." I think she was five or six. So going to work was like being on vacation. I didn't have to do the dishes. I didn't have to clean the house, drive her to school and do all of the chauffeuring. And also it was fun to work. And I felt released, in a way, from the feeling that everything had to be so perfect, absolutely perfect.

PCC:
Everything around you?

LAURIE:
In terms of the work. There was no room for compromise before. And it made life miserable for me, artistically.

PCC:
But now acting is what you had hoped it would be?

LAURIE:
It is what you make it, in terms of the process. And more and more, I understand how important the process is, as opposed to the result.

PCC:
So you can be satisfied without the outside validation?

LAURIE:
Yeah. It's always nice. You're not doing this... you're not performing for yourself, really. You're hoping that you're contributing in a way. If I didn't think that, I wouldn't do it. And that's why I stopped doing it. When I get to the point of feeling that it's just a job, to make money, and has no real purpose, in terms of my relationship to the rest of the world, I don't want to do it anymore.

PCC:
You worked with Sissy Spacek on "Carrie" and then years, later, on "The Grass Harp." What was your relationship like with her?

LAURIE:
I felt extremely connected with Sissy. We hadn't seen each other for 17 years, and yet I felt like a relative was walking in the room that first day when we had the read-through around the table for "Grass Harp."

PCC:
The characters you played in those two films -- the religiously maniacal Margaret White and the charmingly eccentric Dolly -- couldn't have been much farther apart.

LAURIE:
Oh, so totally different. It made it more joyful to be an actor, to get to do something so different with Sissy. I was the mean, abusive person in our relationship, when I played her mother. And this time, she was the abusive one, tough. That was really fun.

PCC:
"Carrie" still gets strong reactions today.

LAURIE:
I thought it was a good movie.

PCC:
The Oscar nominations, were those important to you, in terms of validation?

LAURIE:
According to my daughter, nominations don't count [laughs]. When she was a little girl, she said, "Mommy, how come you never get one?"

PCC:
Do you ever think, before making a picture -- this could be the kind of role that the Academy might sit up and notice?

LAURIE:
It's very scary to me, to think that way. The times I was nominated, it has never entered my mind. Absolutely a complete surprise. So it makes me a little nervous to think that way.

PCC:
Do you enjoy watching your finished performance? Or are you hard on yourself?

LAURIE:
It takes me about 10 years before I can really see the film. When I watch a film I'm in, I cancel my own presence out. And I see everybody else. I'm just absolutely neutral about myself. There's this shadowy creature there [laughs]. And I consciously work at not making a judgment about it.

PCC:
But 10 years is enough distance?

LAURIE:
Ten years later. It took me 15 years, before I saw "The Hustler." I thought that was a great movie. When I saw it the first time, I thought it was terrible, that Robert Rossen, who was a friend, had really failed. So I don't try to judge anymore.

PCC:
When you took 15 years off, were you concerned about how challenging it might be to restart your career?

LAURIE:
I never doubted that I could come back... if I wanted to -- which was kind of foolish, I suppose. And I had no illusions about getting the star parts again. I was actually very surprised and pleased to be offered the role in "Carrie." I didn't miss acting at all. I did a couple of plays during that 15-year period. And I didn't miss it. But then I did begin to feel that it would be fun to act -- fun, as opposed to the intense thing that I needed to do before. Now it's fun. I enjoy it more. And I feel freer. It's not a life-and-death thing anymore for me.

PCC:
So in earlier days, there was a feeling that everything was on the line.

LAURIE:
Absolutely. And I didn't know how to compromise about anything. I'd fight every little thing [laughs].

PCC:
And you just had to do that?

LAURIE:
Oh, I thought so. I remember I was doing a live television version of "Twelfth Night" for Hallmark. And I'd never done Shakespeare before. But I was so excited to do Viola and I thought it was really going well. And Maurice Evans was in it and he was also co-producer of the show and he had a big say in it. And they started cutting the script -- not my part, but everybody else's. And he was playing Malvolio. And it seemed that it was no longer going to be "Twelfth Night." It was going to about Malvolio. And I got into arguments about it with the director and the producers.

I finally issued an ultimatum -- If you cut anymore, I'm going to leave. And I came back after lunch one day and they cut some more. And so I left. And, oh, God, all the lawyers, and all the people... Rosemary Harris came to my hotel -- "The show must go on! And it was wrong to do this."

It was a chance to do Shakespeare, so that people could see it, so that it was fun and good. And they were blowing it. And so Maurice Evans crucified me in all the newspapers -- big stories on how these little wretches from Hollywood... But in all the reviews, they gave me credit for having left the show.

We then were put together on another show after that -- "Caesar and Cleopatra" for television ["General Electric Theater" 1959]. And everybody was very timid about whether we would work with each other. I said, "It doesn't bother me." He said the same thing.

So we had this conference room where we did a read-through on the first day. And in the middle of it, they were discussing a minor little change. And I happened to have a full bladder at the moment and I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. So I quietly got up to go to the ladies room. And apparently, they thought that I had walked out. I came back and everything was exactly as it was. [Laughs]

PCC:
You've mellowed over the years?

LAURIE:
I'm so easy now on the set. I can adjust to anything... almost anything. And use it. People find it very hard to believe that I had a terrible reputation in those days, as a very difficult person.

PCC:
Is that a result of different priorities?

LAURIE:
Partly priorities. Also because I learned that there's more than one way to do something. And that was something that I learned through carving stone. When you have a big piece of marble, you can turn the whole thing over this way and start over and make something else. And I think you can do that with anything creative.

PCC:
You worked with Sean Penn -- someone who has the reputation of being a rebel -- on "The Crossing Guard."

LAURIE:
Sean asked me to do it. And when an actor you respect becomes a director and writer and asks you to be in their movie, it was very, very flattering. And I thought it was an honor that he asked. It's a tiny, little part. But I did it.

PCC:
And his directing style, being an actor, as well, does that color his approach?

LAURIE:
Yeah, definitely it shows.

PCC:
You have a TV movie airing soon, "The Road to Galveston" [1996]...

LAURIE:
Yes, it stars Cicely Tyson and myself. I play an elderly woman with Alzheimer's, of the type where she talks obsessively, except when she's sleeping or eating. The writer had written in the script, "Wanda," is the character's name, "is yapping away." I thought, "Oh, this will be easy. I'll just improvise the whole part. I won't have any lines to learn."

And then I heard that the woman was really a living person and I went to visit her. And she was extraordinary, the things she said. So I just had to go back. And I tape-recorded her and transcribed it. There were pages and pages and pages of stuff. And I selected. And I built my character, really wrote the part, out of that material.

PCC:
Did you also research the illness?

LAURIE:
I actually had done that already, because I played a lady with Alzheimer's in a short-lived TV series I did with George C. Scott ["Traps"]. That character was in the very early stages of it. But I did quite a bit of research. And then I continued to do some, when I was preparing for this one.

PCC:
Wanda must have been a very challenging role.

LAURIE:
Yeah, it was, because many of the patients who have Alzheimers, lose the animation in their face. And that was the case with her. Words come out, but there's no facial expression... And that was hard to train myself not to do, except for chosen moments.

PCC:
How did you feel about being part of "Twin Peaks," when it was such a phenomenon?

LAURIE:
It was fun. Great fun. Physically it was hard, because the hours were so long. And during the days when I was doing the Japanese businessman, I had like six extra hours of makeup and makeup removal. And normally the day would have 18 hours. So I just barely had time to get home and come back again.

PCC:
When a plum role comes along, does it seem like it just dropped from heaven?

LAURIE:
Heaven or hell. You don't know, until you try.

PCC:
Do you prefer a director who lets the actors find their own way to some degree?

LAURIE:
I like a director who makes a good choice in the casting, trusts it, and lets the actors do their work. That's the best.

PCC:
When you're considering a role, what are you looking for? Is there a connective thread?

LAURIE:
Just something with integrity... and freshness, so I don't feel like I'm repeating myself.