Learning to live out loud : a memoir

 by Piper Laurie.  The author is probably familiar to most readers as Carrie White's mother in 1976's Carrie (for which she received the second of her three Oscar nominations) and for her role in the television series Twin Peaks (for which she was nominated twice for an Emmy Award). But Laurie has been acting since she was a girl, securing a contract with Universal-International when she was 17 years old and appearing in such films as The Hustler (which brought her first Oscar nomination) and Children of a Lesser God (her third nomination). Although the story she tells is clearly weighted toward her professional life, she does touch on personal details: her antagonistic relationship with Tony Curtis; her brief romantic dalliance with Ronald Reagan (in which the future president is portrayed as cold, cruel, and egotistical); her marriage; her 15-year hiatus from movie roles; and her rather unusual childhood (which saw Laurie and her sister being sent to live at the Reslocks sanitarium, described as an institutional home for children ). All in all, an involving and occasionally moving life story. --Booklist (Check Catalog)