Piper Laurie was born in Detroit, Michigan, on January 22, 1932. Her real name is Rosetta Jacobs, the daughter of a Polish, Jewish Immigrant, Alfred Jacobs and his Russian-American wife Charlotte Sadie Alperin. Her older sister is named Sherrye Arlene. Her father was a furniture salesman who moved his family to Los Angeles, California in 1938, after first sending Rose and Sherrye to live with their grandparents in Tucson, Arizona, because of Sherrye's poor health due to asthma. Their parents then sent them to a children's home called Restlocks in Southern California, for Sherrye's health, and Rose insisted on accompanying her. She called that the most terrible year of her life, not because the place wasn't nice, but because it simply wasn't home. Her parents moved to Southern California at the end of that year. Rose was a pretty pigtailed red-haired little girl, but very shy, so shy that she often sat in her room and read fairy tales. Later, her parents sent her to weekly elocution lessons. By the age of 8, Rose and Sherrye were already veterans of school shows, and soon did a singing act with the USO. Rose excelled as a Girl Scout in L.A., earning many merit badges, and she and her sister sold over $100,000 of war bonds with the USO at the age of 12. She appeared in the play "A Guest in the House" at the age of eleven, and met Margaret O'Brien who came to see her aunt in the lead part of the play. At the age of 14 she cut off her braids, and was valedictorian of her class. In addition to her lessons in Hebrew school, she studied acting at a local acting school, and she wrote, directed and produced the play in which she was to be discovered. This eventually led to work at Universal Studios, because at 16, she had decided to make show business her career.

Universal Studios signed her as a contract player when she was only 17 years old, and changed her screen name to Piper Laurie. Rose was very upset when she learned her new name, since it soon became the butt of many jokes. She was cast in the film Louisa in 1950 and also in the movie The Milkman with Donald O'Connor, and she became very close friends with her costar, Ronald Reagan in Louisa. 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, and she went along with that image without complaining, though she didn't really like the taste of flower petals. Although she was making $2,000 per week, the 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 acting 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. She also appeared on TV programs such as Ben Casey in Light Up the Dark Corners, Bob Hope Chrysler Theater in Something About Lee Wiley, and Naked City in Howard Running Bear. 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. When he called her and asked if she'd like to go walking in the park, she agreed, and nine months later, they were married. When she did not receive any substantial acting offers after The Hustler, after appearing in the Glass Menagerie on Broadway in 1965, she later 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. Thus ended her second acting career.

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 starred on David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks. She has appeared in more that 60 films, from 1950 to the present, overt 50 years of acting, most recently in A Christmas Memory and The Faculty, and in 1999, appears in Inherit the Wind on Showtime Cable TV. 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 made her a grandmother in 1993, with a little granddaughter named Gracie Anne, and though she lives in Southern California, Piper frequently visits her daughter and cousin in Long Island, New York. Ironically, in a career of film making that has spanned almost 50 years, the one role that Rosetta Jacobs has never played is that of a Jewish woman. In 2002 and early 2003 she played the oldest sister in the play "Morning's at Seven", both in New York City and Los Angeles.