MY LIFE IN 10 Pictures

“I am competitive with myself. I won’t let anything go until I am satisfied with how it is.”

— Laurie

AS A kid in Illinois, Laura Elizabeth Metcalf “was horribly shy” until she landed a high school play. She found she could “do anything onstage and write it off as a character, [even] run around naked!” That fearlessness earned her three Emmys (for Roseanne) and a Tony, yet her popularity never matched her acclaim until her Oscar nod for 2017’s Lady Bird. “I’d like to think that it’s karma — having given 150 percent to each [project], maybe there’s a little payback.” But her biggest rewards come from her kids with two ex-husbands: Mae, Donovan and Will Roth and actress Zoe Perry. “Being a mom enriches you,” says Laurie, who turns 63 on June 16. “I am very lucky that I am able to provide for them, doing what I love.”

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2015 LOVES COMPANY What was it like torturing Bruce Willis on B’way in Stephen King’s Misery? “A lot of fun,” she said. “The set spins — we call it the ‘Misery’-go-round. Once we get on, there’s no getting off for 90 minutes!”

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2017 PARENT TRAP Playing a mom to the title character (Saoirse Ronan) in Lady Bird got her an Oscar nod, but also hit close to home. “I have many harsh things I say to her, which to me are truthful; they’re not said just to be mean,” she said. “But hearing them made me realize I’ve said harsh things to my own kids, [though] it’s all coming from a place of love.”

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1978 OPENING STAGE Laurie (with, from top left, John Malkovich, Gary Sinise and Joan Allen, and first husband Jeff Perry, bottom right) was an original member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company (which staged her Obie-winning 1984 NYC debut, Balm in Gilead). “Theater opened up a whole new world for me,” she’s said. “It was a freedom I’d never known before.”

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1989 SISTER ACT “What a mess she was,” said Laurie of Roseanne’s sis Jackie on Roseanne (a role which won her three Emmys). “She was kind of lost, but had people take care of her. It was a crazy kind of funny.” And returning for the 2017 reboot was like “putting on a nice old pair of shoes again.”

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1997 FREAK OUT Asked about her loopy Mrs. Loomis character in the horror hit Scream 2, she said “I get to play a number of freaks, and I don’t know if I’m getting cast as a freak or if I bring my own freakiness to the character.”

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1999 NEW NORM Norm Macdonald (center) developed a co-worker role on his sitcom The Norm Show with Laurie in mind. “I defy anyone who worked with [Norm on it] to not have a giant crush on him because of his talent, wit and adorableness,” she said.

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2011 KNOWIT-ALL “I love popping in” to play Sheldon’s mom on The Big Bang Theory. “I think she’s really judgmental, couched behind a smile and because she has God on her side, that gives her a weird confidence that she can’t be wrong about anything, but other people can.”

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2013 AGING WELL “Getting On was one of my favorite projects ever,” Laurie said of the HBO sitcom, set in a nursing home. “I loved the free pass of being… as inconsiderate as I wanted to be, as charmless as I wanted to be.”

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2017 CREDIT DUE Winning her first Tony for A Doll’s House, Part 2 (after three-plus decades in the business) was a triumphant moment. But she saved her greatest gratitude for her youngest kids: “I have to thank my daughter May and my son Donovan for putting up with me being gone for long stretches of time so I could do what I love doing most, which is working in the theater.”

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2018 LIKE MOTHER Life imitated art when daughter Zoe Perry got to play a younger take of her Big Bang mom on Young Sheldon. “[But] I don’t give her advice for the same reasons that I don’t direct plays. There is a real skill to be able to talk to a fellow actor and not mess them up. And I don’t have that skill.”