Yootha Joyce

In 2001, a tribute documentary entitled The Unforgettable Yootha Joyce was aired by ITV. She had a recurring role in the television series Twin Peaks. In 1986, a photograph of Yootha Joyce adorned the sleeve of Ask, a single released by British band The Smiths. She received another Supporting Actress nomination in 1987 for Children of a Lesser God. Yootha Joyce married once, to the actor Glynn Edwards, best known for playing Dave the landlord in Minder, but the marriage ended in divorce. She appeared in the Australian film Tim opposite a very young Mel Gibson, but perhaps her most famous role in her later career was as the fanatically religious mother in Carrie, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The actor Brian Murphy, who played her screen husband George Roper, was at her bedside. Once again disenchanted with the work available, Laurie returned to semi-retirement to raise a family.

For many years she battled alcoholism and ultimately succumbed, in hospital, to hepatitis four days after her 53rd birthday in 1980. In 1961 she returned to Hollywood to star opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. A feature film was made of George And Mildred in 1980, but this was to be Joyce's last work. Dissatisfied with the work she was being offered in Hollywood, Laurie went to New York City in 1955 to work on the live television programs of the 1950s, in such productions as Twelfth Night and Days of Wine and Roses. Much of the new series centred on Mildred's desire to better herself in her new surroundings, but always being thwarted, usually unwittingly, by her lifeskill-lacking husband's desire for a quiet life. She signed a contract with Universal Studios when she was 17, co-starring with Ronald Reagan in Louisa. The couple were seen moving from the London house which they'd owned in the previous programme and into a suburban semi-detached property. Born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, she moved to Los Angeles, California when she was young.

When the series reached a natural end, a spin-off was written for the Ropers, and George and Mildred first aired in 1976. Piper Laurie (born January 22, 1932) is an American actress. This series ran until 1976 and told the story of two young women and a young man sharing the Ropers' upstairs flat, and the sexual tension and misunderstandings such living arrangements provide. In the 1960s and 1970s, she became a familiar face in many one-off sitcom roles and supporting parts in films, but it wasn't until 1973 that she acquired a starring role, when she was cast as man-hungry Mildred Roper, wife of landlord George, in the innovative sitcom Man About The House, which was to prove a massive hit with viewers. First coming to prominence in the renowned Joan Littlewood Theatre Group, she made her film debut in 1962 in Sparrows Can't Sing.

Yootha Joyce (20th August 1927 - 24th August 1980) was a British actress.