Piper Laurie

In Carrie (1976), Piper Laurie's Margaret White leaves her daughter little room to disagree. Laurie makes religious certainty oppressive without needing much help from the gothic surroundings: Margaret is frightening because she cannot entertain the possibility that she is wrong. Brian De Palma has a powerful pairing in Laurie and Sissy Spacek, whose smaller changes give their arguments a painful imbalance. We found those clashes upsetting because Carrie ought to be able to trust the mother causing her distress.

Her early Universal films in the 1950s often confined her to lightweight ingénue parts. The Hustler (1961) brought a dramatic breakthrough as Sarah Packard opposite Paul Newman, with an understated emotional detail that deserves attention beside Margaret's fierceness. After a fifteen-year absence from feature films, her return in Carrie helped define her later reputation. Later parts included Mrs Norman, the mother of a deaf daughter, in Children of a Lesser God (1986). Television brought Catherine Martell in David Lynch's Twin Peaks (1990).

We do not think she always judges the pressure correctly. Beside Spacek's smaller changes, Laurie's emphasis can make Margaret easier to dismiss than she should be. That is a serious risk when the fear depends on recognising a parent with the power to wound her child, rather than merely waiting for the next outburst. The arguments remain troubling, and Carrie earns our warm recommendation, but they need less insistence from Laurie than she sometimes gives them.

Laurie's own explanation of Margaret helps: “She was a true believer.” That is a useful way to approach the performance, because it gives her something to play beyond the wish to frighten us. The mother has beliefs she regards as beyond dispute, and Laurie makes that conviction the source of the daughter's distress. Start with Carrie, then try The Hustler before assuming that frightening people was all she could do.