TABLES TURN FOR LAURIE.

In ``Carrie,'' Piper Laurie played a whacked-out religious freak who physically and mentally beat her weirdly powered daughter - portrayed by then-starlet Sissy Spacek.

That was 20 years and a lot of movies ago. Now, in the just-released film ``The Grass Harp,'' the tables have turned. Laurie, 64, plays Spacek's sister. And this time, it's Spacek who dominates Laurie's meek character.

``It was really ... swell,'' says a slyly smiling Laurie of playing the sister of a woman who once played her daughter.

Indeed, Spacek, 46, even looks older than Laurie in the film, which suits the pinch-faced nature of Spacek's Verena, a hard-boiled aging businesswoman who lives to control others.

Laurie, on the other hand, plays Dolly, a woman as sweet and innocent as a newborn babe. Her kindness earns her the affection of two men - a teen-age orphaned cousin (Edward Furlong) and a retired judge (Walter Matthau).

Rosy-cheeked and luminescent in person, Laurie says she first thought director Charlie Matthau (Walter's son) wanted her to play Verena.

``When I heard this film was going to be done, I thought they'd want me to play that part,'' she says. ``After all, I've played a lot of cold, angry ladies.''

She was thrilled but ``terrified'' to learn she was wanted for Dolly. ``I couldn't breathe,'' she says. ``But I thought `I can't walk away from this.' ''

Indeed, Dolly is a character that frightens Laurie more than Carrie's evil mom ever could, in part because it is much more difficult to play pure niceness.

``Dolly is so original. I thought, `How can you make her real?' Playing someone a little loony can be cliche.''

Laurie herself has been anything but a Hollywood cliche.

She started in films at age 17 as a contract player for Universal, where her given name - Rosetta Jacobs - was changed to the odd-if-memorable Piper Laurie.

``I'm a Russian Jewish lady from Detroit with a weird name,'' she says, laughing.

After six years under contract, in which she was cast in a number of forgettable films, mostly as the ingenue, Laurie left Hollywood for New York, where she worked in live television on the ``Playhouse 90'' series.

In 1961, Laurie got her big break when she was cast as Paul Newman's girlfriend in ``The Hustler,'' a role that earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

But instead of parlaying that part into bigger opportunities in Hollywood, Laurie took a 15-year hiatus from films to raise her daughter (she was married to film critic Joseph Morgenstern).

When she returned to films in 1976, she came back as a character actress.

``I wish I was more ambitious,'' she says, ``and the kind of person who could create roles and vehicles for myself.''

Despite a self-described lack of ambition, however, she has carved a niche in a competitive industry as a solid performer. Indeed, she's been nominated three times for Oscars and twice for Emmys.

And, although many older women in Hollywood decry the lack of good parts for over-40 females, Laurie isn't one to complain.

``If a movie is good, it doesn't matter who is in it.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) Piper Laurie, left, stars with Walter Matthau in ``The Grass Harp.'' The film reteams Laurie with ``Carrie'' co-star Sissy Spacek.

(2) no caption (Piper Laurie)