Laura Linney biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Born on February 5, 1964, in New York City, to playwright Romulus Linney and nurse Ann Leggett Perse, Laura Linney grew up on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Her parents divorced when she was only 6 months old. The young Linney amused herself by nurturing her love of acting, which she pursued throughout her adolescence. She graduated from Brown University in 1986 with a degree in theater, then completed a graduate program in drama at the Juilliard School in New York City, where she roomed with fellow actress Jeanne Tripplehorn (Basic Instinct and The Firm).

Stage and Film Debut

In 1990, Linney landed a job as an understudy in the New York stage production of Six Degrees of Separation. She eventually took over the part, making her off-Broadway and Broadway debuts. Her first film role was as a young teacher in Lorenzo's Oil (1992), starring Nick Nolte, but she made a bigger impression on audiences for her small but memorable role in Dave (1993), in which she plays a White House secretary who has an affair with the president (played by Kevin Kline).

Early Career

Laura Linney nabbed her first lead role on television in 1994, earning raves for her performance as the naïve Mary Ann Singleton in the edgy PBS adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. She would reprise the role in the sequel, shown on Showtime in 1998. A third installment aired in 2001. On the big screen, she continued to add film roles to her resume, playing opposite Steve Martin in the little-seen film A Simple Twist of Fate (1994), and co-starring in the adventure-thriller Congo (1995), which was a hit at the box office but a bust with critics. In 1997, Linney played the ex-lover and courtroom opponent of star Richard Gere's character in the thriller Primal Fear, also featuring Edward Norton and Frances McDormand. She also appeared as the daughter of Clint Eastwood's character in the political thriller Absolute Power (1997).

While building her career in Hollywood, Linney continued her impressive work in theater, giving a breakthrough performance in Sight Unseen in 1992, and starring opposite Tony Goldwyn in the Broadway revival of Philip Barry's Holiday in 1995. She returned to the Great White Way in 1998, co-starring in Honour with Jane Alexander.