Native New Yorker Laura Linney is one of the most acclaimed American actresses of the last ten years. A three-time Oscar nominee, Linney gives variegated and sensitive performances, exuding an extraordinary empathy for her characters.
Born in New York City on February 5, 1964, Linney is the daughter of Ann Perse (a nurse) and Romulus Linney (a playwright). Her background is a model of Northeastern educational excellence – after graduating from the Northfield Mount Hermon boarding school in 1982, she headed to Chicago for Northwestern University but ultimately graduated from Brown. She then went on to graduate studies in acting at the Juilliard School, and proceeded to earn acclaim in a variety of Broadway roles.
Linney’s film career began in the early 90s, first with small roles in films including “Lorenzo’s Oil,” “Dave,” and “Searching for Bobby Fischer.” She turned heads in Hollywood with her critically lauded role on the 1993 mini-series “Tales of the City,” which led to starring roles in “Congo,” Edward Norton’s breakthrough film “Primal Fear,” Clint Eastwood’s “Absolute Power,” and eventually the Peter Weir-directed Jim Carrey dramedy “The Truman Show.” The latter film earned Linney the best reviews of her career to that point for playing Carrey’s deceptively cheery reality show wife, and she next appeared in an underrated adaptation of “The House of Mirth” starring Gillian Anderson. Her tender, humorous performance in Kenneth Lonergan’s “You Can Count on Me” was rewarded with her first Oscar nomination.
Since ascending the ranks of American thesps, Linney has appeared in “The Laramie Project,” “The Life of David Gale,” “Mystic River,” “Love Actually,” “Kinsey” (another Oscar-nominated role), and Noah Baumbach’s stellar “The Squid and the Whale,” among others. 2007 was a busy year for Linney; she appeared in “Breach” with Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillippe, “The Nanny Diaries” with Scarlett Johansson, and Tamara Jenkins’s “The Savages” with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Linney has received her third Oscar nomination for “The Savages.”
At only 44, Linney has a long career ahead of her. Her current projects include James Ivory’s “The City of Your Final Destination,” the big-budget HBO mini-series “John Adams” with Paul Giamatti (she plays Abigail Adams), and “Notes on a Scandal” director Richard Eyre’s “The Other Man,” which will reunite her with “Kinsey” co-star Liam Neeson.