Learning to Live Out Loud by Piper Laurie

Piper Laurie was briefly a contract player at Universal, which is what sparked my interest in her. And while she was not one of Old Hollywood's top actresses, her life is fascinating - she was one of Universal's last contract actresses, before leaving Hollywood for a stage career and then hitting her peak around middle age in truly rich screen roles, perhaps best known as the mother in Brian de Palma's Carrie.Ī wonderful actress, a wonderful writer, and this is a wonderful Hollywood tell-all which I won't spoil for you but it includes lots of tidbits about Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, Sissy Spacek, and many more. Although Laurie describes suffering from severe anxiety and issues with speech articulation, her writing style is so relaxed and natural from the opening pages that you would never know. But Piper Laurie really hits it out of the park in a memoir up there with Lauren Bacall and David Niven's, in my opinion some of the best Hollywood tell-alls. I was very disappointed in Diane Keaton's scant recent bio for that reason.

It's hard for film stars to hit the right balance between 'TMI' and stinginess when they turn to their memoirs. She started life as a withdrawn, mute child who couldn’t find her voice and was transformed into a woman who learned to live out loud by her own rules. This memoir is the inspiring tale of Piper’s perseverance to break from tradition and to practice her craft at the highest level. She grew into a three-time Oscar-nominated actress, an accomplished sculptor, and a director. It was only after she left the oppressive studio culture that she began to star in the TV shows, plays, and films that truly became the hallmarks of her career: The Glass Menagerie on Broadway, the original Days of Wine and Roses, The Hustler, the iconic Carrie, and Twin Peaks. After years in the studio system, shy Piper Laurie found her voice and the courage to burn her contract.

Mortified by the shallowness of the roles and movies she was given, she longed for the freedom and fulfillment of her own artistic vision. Her name was emblazoned on marquees across America for hit movies of the fifties such as the The Prince Who Was a Thief, The Mississippi Gambler, and Ain’t Misbehavin’.īut Piper discovered early on that the little girl’s dream was not her own. Her beauty was admired by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Howard Hughes, Paul Newman, Tony Curtis, as well as dozens of directors and legions of fans. Having been selected by Universal Studios to be a contract star, Piper was removed from her acting class and provided with stylists, chaperones, leading roles, and handsome dates, and elevated to the heights of Hollywood. An intimate memoir by three-time Oscar nominee Piper Laurie, one of Hollywood's most gifted and respected actressesĪt the age of seventeen, in the glory days of movie-making, Piper Laurie was living every little girl’s dream.

Learning to Live Out Loud by Piper Laurie