Laura Linney

Laura Linney
Linney at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Laura Leggett Linney February 5, 1964 (1964-02-05) (age 47) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1992–present
Spouse	David Adkins (1995–2000) (divorced) Marc Schauer (2009-present)

Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for the Academy Award three times and once for the BAFTA Award. She will star in the upcoming Showtime original series, The Big C with Oliver Platt and Gabourey Sidibe.

Personal life

Linney was born in New York City. Her mother, Miriam Anderson "Ann" Perse (née Leggett), is a nurse who worked at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and her father, Romulus Linney, is a well-known playwright and professor.^[1][2][3][4] Linney's paternal great-great-grandfather was Republican U.S. Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney.^[5] Despite her pedigree, Linney grew up living with her mother in a small one-bedroom apartment in modest circumstances after her parents' divorce.^[6] She has a half-sister, Susan, from her father's second marriage. Linney graduated from the Northfield Mount Hermon School in 1982. She then attended Northwestern University before transferring to Brown University, where she studied acting with Jim Barnhill and John Emigh, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986. Linney then went on to study acting at the Juilliard School.^[3] She feels that it was necessary for her art to attend graduate school.^[7]

Linney married David Adkins in 1995. They divorced in 2000. In 2007, she became engaged to Marc Schauer (not to be confused with Michigan Congressman Mark Schauer), a real estate agent from Telluride, Colorado.^[8]

Linney was a guest and presenter at the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009.^[9]

Career

Film

Linney at the Chicago International Film Festival, 2007

Linney appeared in minor roles in a few early 1990s films, including Dave in 1993, before coming to prominence in the public television mini-series Tales of the City.^[3] She was then cast in a series of high-profile thrillers, including Congo, Primal Fear and Absolute Power. She made her Hollywood breakthrough in 1998 when she played Jim Carrey's on-screen wife in The Truman Show, for which she received critical acclaim.^[3]

In 2000, Linney was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the lower-budget film You Can Count on Me.^[3] The same year, she also appeared in the role of an artist's model in the low-budget, critically praised film Maze with Rob Morrow. In 2003, Linney appeared in several notable films, including Mystic River, Love Actually and The Life of David Gale. Her 2004 performance in Kinsey, as the title character's wife, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.^[3]

In 2005, Linney starred in horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the comedy-drama The Squid and the Whale; for the latter role, she received a Golden Globe nomination for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy". In 2006, Linney appeared in the political satire Man of the Year, the comedy Driving Lessons (starring Rupert Grint of Harry Potter fame), and the Australian drama Jindabyne by Ray Lawrence. Jindabyne was based on Raymond Carver's short novel So Much Water so Close to Home.

In 2007, Linney appeared in the spy thriller Breach, The Nanny Diaries, opposite Scarlett Johansson and based on the book by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus,^[10] and The Savages, where Linney starred with Philip Seymour Hoffman^[3] She received her third Academy Award nomination for this film - this time as Best Actress.^[11] Columnist Liz Smith commented in the New York Post that Linney is "very hot, reputation wise", due to her Oscar nomination for The Savages.

Recently, Linney starred in The Other Man, with Antonio Banderas and Liam Neeson, the latter whom she had starred with in Kinsey and Love Actually.

Television

Linney starred as Mary Ann Singleton in the television adaptations of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books (1993, 1998, and 2001). She won her first Emmy Award in 2002 for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie" for Wild Iris. In 2004, she had won her second Emmy Award as "Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series," for her recurring role as the final love interest of Frasier Crane in the television series Frasier.^[3] In 2008, Linney won an Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her portrayal of Abigail Adams, wife of the second president of the United States, in the HBO mini-series John Adams.^[3] She also received a Golden Globe and SAG award for Best Performance by an Actress In a Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television in 2009 for this role.

In 1994 Linney guest-starred in an episode of Law & Order (episode "Blue Bamboo") as "Martha Bowen". She played a Blonde American singer who successfully claimed "Battered Woman Syndrome" as a defense to the murder of a Japanese businessman.

Laura Linney returns to series television as actress and executive producer in Showtime's half-hour series about cancer, The Big C, which debuts in Summer 2010. She stars as a suburban wife and mother who explores the emotional ups and downs of a cancer battle, and the changes it brings to her life and her sense of who she is.^[12]

Theater/other

Linney's extensive stage credits on Broadway and elsewhere include Hedda Gabler (for which she won a 1994 Joe A. Callaway Award), Holiday (based on the 1938 movie starring Katharine Hepburn), and her Best Actress Tony Award-nominated 2002 role in The Crucible (where she appeared alongside future The Exorcism Of Emily Rose co-star Jennifer Carpenter). She was nominated again in 2005 for Sight Unseen.

Linney also appeared on Sandra Boynton's children's CD, Philadelphia Chickens, on which she sings "Please Can I Keep It?", and played La Marquise de Merteuil in a revival of Christopher Hampton's play Les Liaisons Dangereuses.^[13]

Linney recently finished a three month run on Broadway in the drama Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies. She received glowing reviews for her performance opposite Alicia Silverstone and Brian d'Arcy James. She was nominated for a 2010 Tony award for Best Leading Actress in a Play. It was announced on May 5, 2010 that Time Stands Still will return to Broadway with most of the cast from the Manhattan Theatre Club run intact.

Laura Linney was parodied on an episode of "Family Guy" (Ocean's Three and a Half): Quagmire wanted to use Carter's money to make a movie. The Cutaway shows Jeff Bridges and Linney starring in 'Danger in Cincinnati' with a voice over by Don LaFontaine.

Filmography

References

External links

• Laura Linney at the Internet Movie Database
• Laura Linney at the Internet Broadway Database
• Laura Linney at TV.com
• BlackFilm interview (August, 2005)
• Combustible Celluloid interview (February 17, 2003)
• Hollywood.com interview (January 3, 2001)
• "The Age of Laura Linney," Frank Bruni, The New York Times Magazine 28 July 2010