Laura Linney
☼ Born on 5 December 1964, in New York City, New York, USA
Biography
Laura Leggett Linney was born in New York City on February 5, 1964, into a theatre family. Her father was prominent playwright Romulus Linney, whose own great-grandfather was a congressman from North Carolina. Her mother, Miriam Anderson (Leggett), is a nurse. Although she did not live in her father's house (her parents having divorced when she was an infant), Linney's world revolved, in part, around his profession from the earliest age. She graduated from Brown University in 1986 and studied acting at Juilliard and the Arts Theatre School in Moscow and, thereafter, embarked on a career on the Broadway stage receiving favorable notices for her work in such plays as "Hedda Gabler" and "Six Degrees of Separation".
Linney's film career began in the early 1990s with small roles in Lorenzo's Oil (1992) and Dave (1993). She landed the role of Mary Anne Singleton in the PBS film adaptations of Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" series, playing her in Tales of the City (1993), More Tales of the City (1998) and Further Tales of the City (2001). Linney's first substantial big-screen role was as the ex-girlfriend of Richard Gere's character in Primal Fear (1996) and her superb performance brought her praise and a better selection of roles. Clint Eastwood chose Linney to play his daughter, another prominent role, in 1997's Absolute Power (1997), followed by another second billing in the following year's The Truman Show (1998).
Always a strong performer, Linney truly came into her own af
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ter 2000, starting the decade auspiciously with her widely-praised, arguably flawless performance in You Can Count on Me (2000). She found herself nominated for an Academy Award for this, her first lead role, for which her salary had been $10,000. Linney won numerous critics' awards for her role as Sammy, a single mother whose life is complicated by a new boss and the arrival in town of her aimless brother. On the heels of this success came her marvelous turn as Bertha Dorset in The House of Mirth (2000), clearly the best performance in a film of strong performances. Since then, Linney has frequently been offered challenging dramatic roles, and always rises to the occasion, such as in Mystic River (2003) and Kinsey (2004), for which she received another Academy Award nomination.
In the role of actor
Wildcat – TIFF 2023 (13/09/2023)
Ethan Hawke directs his daughter Maya in a biopic about author Flannery O’Connor in Wildcat. Flannery O’Connor (Maya Hawke) is a deeply Catholic aspiring writer from New York of the 1950s. While travelling to Kentucky to visit her mother Regina (Laura Linney), Flannery is diagnosed with Lupus, a condition that previously took the life of her […]
Nocturnal Animals (22/11/2016)
An art gallery owner is haunted by a manuscript written by her ex-husband in Nocturnal Animals. Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is the wealthy owner of an art gallery, who live a somewhat empty life with his often absentee husband Hutton (Armie Hammer). One days Susan receives a manuscript for a novel entitled “Nocturnal Animals,” written by […]
nirvanna the band the show (11/09/2016)
Viceland presents the television series nirvanna the band the show, based on the original webseries of the same name by Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol. Matt and Jay are two members of a band, whose ultimate goal is to get a gig at the Rivoli club in Toronto. The two come up with a number of elaborate […]
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (04/06/2016)
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles must band together to face off against new mutant foes and an extraterrestrial threat in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. Following their defeat of the Shredder (Brian Tee) one year previous, Leonardo (Pete Ploszek), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), and Michelangelo (Noel Fisher) let Vernon Fenwick (Will […]