Laura Linney Biography
Laura Linney (Laura Leggett Linney) is an American actress and singer. Linney is the recipient of several awards, including two Golden Globe Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards. Linney has also been nominated for three Academy Awards and four Tony Awards. In 1990 Linney made her Broadway debut before going on to receive Tony Award nominations for the 2002 revival of The Crucible, the original Broadway productions of Sight Unseen in 2004 and Time Stands Still in 2010 and the 2017 revival of The Little Foxes. On television, Linney won her first Emmy Award for the television film Wild Iris in 2001 and had subsequent wins for the sitcom Frasier 2003 to 2004 and the miniseries John Adams in 2008. From 2010 to 2013, Linney starred in the Showtime series The Big C, which won her a fourth Emmy in 2013. Currently Linney stars in the Netflix series Ozark.
Laura Linney is also an established film actress. She made her screen debut in 1992 in the film Lorenzo’s Oil and went on to receive Academy Award nominations for You Can Count On Me in 2000, Kinsey in 2004 and The Savages in 2007. Linney’s other films include Primal Fear in 1996, The Truman Show in 1998, Mystic River in 2003, Love Actually in 2003, The Squid and the Whale in 2005, The Nanny Diaries in 2007, Sully in 2016 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows in 2016.
Laura Linne Age
Laura Linney is 55 years old as per 2018 born on February 5, 1964 in New York City, U.S.
Laura Linney Husband | Relationships
Laura Linney married David Adkins in 1995, in 2000 they divorced. Linney became engaged again in 2007 to Marc Schauer, a real estate agent from Telluride, Colorado. In May 2009, on her wedding day, actor Liam Neeson walked her down the aisle. Linney gave birth on January 8, 2014, to a son, Bennett Armistead Schauer. Linney was a guest and presenter at the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009.
Laura Linney Career
Film
Laura Linney’s mother Miriam Anderson “Ann” Perse (née Leggett) was a nurse at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and her father Romulus Zachariah Linney IV from 1930 to 2011 was a playwright and professor. Her paternal great-great-grandfather was Republican U.S. Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney. Linney grew up in modest circumstances, living with her mother in a small one-bedroom apartment. Linney has a half-sister named Susan from her father’s second marriage.

Laura Linney is a graduate of Northfield Mount Hermon School in 1982 an elite preparatory school in New England for which she currently serves as the chair of the Arts Advisory Council. Linney then attended Northwestern University before transferring to Brown University, where she studied acting with John Emigh and Jim Barnhill and served on the board of Production Workshop, the university’s student theater group. She performed in one of her father’s plays as Lady Ada Lovelace during her senior year at Brown in a production of Childe Byron, a drama in which poet Lord Byron mends a taut, distant relationship with his daughter Ada.
In 1986, Laura Linney graduated from Brown. She went on to study acting from 1986 to 1990 at the Juilliard School as a member of Group 19, which also included Jeanne Tripplehorn. Linney received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Juilliard when she delivered the school’s commencement address in 2009.
Laura Linney first appeared in a few early 1990s films in minor roles, including Lorenzo’s Oil in 1992 and Dave in 1993, before coming to prominence in the public television miniseries Tales of the City in 1993. Laura Linney was then cast in a series of high-profile thrillers, including Congo in 1995, Primal Fear in 1996 and Absolute Power in 1997. In 1998, she made her Hollywood breakthrough, praised for playing Jim Carrey’s on-screen wife in The Truman Show. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the 2000 film You Can Count On Me. The same year, Linney also appeared in the role of an artist’s model in the low-budget film Maze with Rob Morrow. Linney appeared in 2003, in several notable films, including The Life of David Gale, Love Actually and Mystic River. The latter film earned Linney a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her performance in Kinsey in 2004, again as the title character’s wife, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Linney starred in 2005, in the horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the comedy-drama The Squid and the Whale. For the latter role, Linney received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Linney appeared in 2006, in the political satire Man of the Year, the comedy Driving Lessons (starring Rupert Grint) and the Australian drama Jindabyne by Ray Lawrence. Jindabyne was based on Raymond Carver’s short story So Much Water so Close to Home. Linney appeared in the spy thriller Breach in 2007, the comedy-drama The Nanny Diaries opposite Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans and based on the book by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus and The Savages with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Linney received a third Academy Award nomination for The Savages, this time for Best Actress. Linney starred in 2008, in The Other Man, opposite Liam Neeson, with whom she had starred in Kinsey and Love Actually and Antonio Banderas. She starred opposite Bill Murray in Hyde Park on Hudson in 2012. She starred in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows in 2016. Linney will be starring alongside Chris Pratt, Mira Sorvino, Naomi Watts, Rebecca Hall, Eddie Redmayne, Hailee Steinfeld, Nicolas Cage, Jordana Brewster and Toni Garrn in Callander Square.
Television
Laura Linney starred in the television adaptations of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City books as Mary Ann Singleton in 1993, 1998, and 2001. In 2002, Linney won her first Emmy Award for “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie” for Wild Iris. She won her second Emmy as “Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series,” in 2004, for her recurring role as the final love interest of Frasier Crane in the television series Frasier. She won an Emmy in the category “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie” in 2008, for her portrayal of Abigail Adams, wife of the second president of the United States, in the HBO miniseries John Adams. Linney guest-starred in an episode of Law & Order in October 1994, (episode “Blue Bamboo”) as Martha Bowen. Linney played a blonde American singer who successfully claimed “battered woman syndrome” as a defense to the murder of a Japanese businessman. She returned to series television in Showtime’s half-hour series about cancer as actress and executive producer, The Big C, which debuted in mid-2010. Linney starred as a suburban wife and mother who explores the emotional ups and downs of suffering cancer and the changes it brings to her life and her sense of who she is. In January 2011, Linney won a Golden Globe award for her performance. Since 2009, she has served as host of the PBS television series Masterpiece Classic. She began starring as Wendy Byrde alongside Jason Bateman In 2017, in the Netflix crime drama series Ozark.
Theater
Her extensive stage credits on Broadway and elsewhere include Hedda Gabler, for which she won the 1994 Joe A. Callaway Award and Holiday in December 1995 through January 1996 (based on the 1938 movie starring Katharine Hepburn). Linney received a Best Actress Tony Award nomination for her role in the Broadway production of The Crucible in March 2002 through June 2002. In 2005, she was nominated again for Sight Unseen, in which she appeared on Broadway in May 2004 through July 2004. 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. From January 28, 2010, through March 27, 2010, Linney had a three-month run on Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies. Linney was nominated for a 2010 Tony award for Best Leading Actress in a Play. The play returned in September 2010 to Broadway with most of the original cast and closed on January 30, 2011.
Laura Linney appeared on Broadway in the revival of The Little Foxes, which opened officially on April 19, 2017 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Linney alternated the roles of Regina and Birdie with Cynthia Nixon.
Laura Linney Movies
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
1992 | Lorenzo’s Oil | Young Teacher | |
1993 | Dave | Randi | |
Searching for Bobby Fischer | School Teacher | ||
1994 | A Simple Twist of Fate | Nancy Lambert Newland | |
1995 | Congo | Dr. Karen Ross | |
1996 | Primal Fear | Janet Venable | |
1997 | Absolute Power | Kate Whitney | |
1998 | The Truman Show | Meryl Burbank/Hannah Gill | |
1999 | Lush | Rachel Van Dyke | |
2000 | You Can Count On Me | Samantha “Sammy” Prescott | |
The House of Mirth | Bertha Dorset | ||
Maze | Callie | ||
2002 | The Laramie Project | Sherry Johnson | |
The Mothman Prophecies | Officer Connie Mills | ||
2003 | The Life of David Gale | Constance Harraway | |
Mystic River | Annabeth Markum | ||
Love Actually | Sarah | ||
2004 | P.S. | Louise Harrington | |
Kinsey | Clara McMillen | ||
2005 | The Squid and the Whale | Joan Berkman | |
The Exorcism of Emily Rose | Erin Bruner | ||
2006 | Driving Lessons | Laura Marshall | |
Jindabyne | Claire | ||
The Hottest State | Jesse | ||
Man of the Year | Eleanor Green | ||
2007 | The Savages | Wendy Savage | |
Breach | Kate Burroughs | ||
The Nanny Diaries | Mrs. X | ||
2008 | The Other Man | Lisa | |
2009 | The City of Your Final Destination | Caroline | |
2010 | Sympathy for Delicious | Nina Hogue | |
Morning | Dr. Goodman | ||
2011 | The Details | Lila | |
Arthur Christmas | North Pole Computer | Voice | |
2012 | Hyde Park on Hudson | Margaret Suckley | |
2013 | The Fifth Estate | Sarah Shaw | |
2015 | Mr. Holmes | Mrs. Munro | |
2016 | Genius | Louise Saunders | |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows | Rebecca Vincent | ||
Sully | Lorraine Sullenberger | ||
Nocturnal Animals | Anne Sutton | Cameo | |
2017 | The Dinner | Claire Lohman | |
TBA | Untitled Sally Potter project | Rita | Post-production |
Laura Linney Television
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
1993 | Class of ’61 | Lily Magraw | TV movie |
1993 | Blind Spot | Phoebe | TV movie |
1993 | Tales of the City | Mary Ann Singleton | Miniseries; 7 episodes |
1994 | Law & Order | Martha Bowen | Episode: “Blue Bamboo” |
1998 | More Tales of the City | Mary Ann Singleton | Miniseries; 6 episodes |
1999 | Love Letters | Melisa Gardner Cobb | TV movie |
2000 | Running Mates | Lauren Hartman | TV movie |
2001 | Further Tales of the City | Mary Ann Singleton | Miniseries; 3 episodes |
2001 | Wild Iris | Iris Bravard | TV movie |
2002 | King of the Hill | Marlene | Voice; Episode: “Dang Ol’ Love” |
2003–2004 | Frasier | Mindy / Charlotte | 6 episodes |
2006 | American Dad! | Doctor Gupta | Voice; Episode: “Roger ‘n’ Me” |
2008 | John Adams | Abigail Adams | Miniseries; 7 episodes |
2010–2013 | The Big C | Cathy Jamison | 40 episodes, also executive producer |
2016 | Inside Amy Schumer | Herself | Episode: “Brave” |
2017 | Red Nose Day Actually | Sarah | Television short film[a] |
2017 | Last Week Tonight with John Oliver | Florence Harding | Segment: “Harding” |
2017–present | Ozark | Wendy Byrde | 20 episodes |
2017 | Sink Sank Sunk | Mitzi Mills | TV movie |
2018 | BoJack Horseman | Herself | Voice; Episode: “The Dog Days Are Over” |
2019 | Tales of the City | Mary Ann Singleton | Main cast |
Laura Linney Theatre Credits
Year | Title | Role | Dates | Notes |
1990–1992 | Six Degrees of Separation | Tess | Nov 8, 1990 – Jan 5, 1992 | |
1992 | Sight Unseen | Grete | N/A | |
1992–1993 | The Seagull | Nina | Nov 29, 1992 – Jan 10, 1993 | |
1994 | Hedda Gabler | Thea Elvsted | Jul 10 – Aug 7, 1994 | |
1995–1996 | Holiday | Linda Seton | Dec 3, 1995 – Jan 14, 1996 | |
1998 | Honour | Claudia | Apr 26 – Jun 14, 1998 | |
2000 | Uncle Vanya | Yelena Andreyevna | Apr 30 – Jun 11, 2000 | |
2002 | The Crucible | Elizabeth Proctor | Mar 7 – Jun 9, 2002 | |
2004 | Sight Unseen | Patricia | May 25 – Jul 25, 2004 | |
2008 | Les liaisons dangereuses | La Marquise de Merteuil | May 1 – Jul 6, 2008 | |
2010–2011 | Time Stands Still | Sarah Goodwin | Jan 28, 2010 – Jan 30, 2011 | |
2017 | The Little Foxes | Regina Giddens / Birdie Hubbard | Apr 19 – Jul 2, 2017 | |
2018 | My Name Is Lucy Barton | Lucy Barton | Jun 2 – Jun 24, 2018 | Bridge Theatre |