LAURA LINNEY Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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LAURA LINNEY

Name: Laura Leggett Linney                                                               
Born: 5 February 1964 New York City, New York, United States                             
                                                                                         
Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is a three-time Academy Award-nominated     
and two-time Emmy Award-winning American actress, active in movies, television,           
and theatre.                                                                             
                                                                                         
Linney was born in New York City. Her mother, 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.                 
Linney's paternal great-great-grandfather was Republican U.S. Congressman                 
Romulus Zachariah Linney. 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 graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986. After attending         
Brown University, Linney went on to study acting at the Juilliard School.                 
                                                                                         
Linney married David Adkins in 1995. They divorced in 2000. As of 2007, she is           
engaged to Marc Schauer.                                                                 
                                                                                         
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. She was then cast in a series of high-profile thrillers, including             
Congo, Primal Fear and Absolute Power. Her breakthrough into the mainstream came         
in 1998 when she was cast as Jim Carrey's wife in The Truman Show, for which she         
received much critical acclaim. In 2000, she was nominated for an Academy Award           
for Best Actress for her role in the lower-budget film You Can Count on Me. 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. In 2005, Linney starred in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (a horror movie           
and courtroom drama), and the very well-reviewed comedy-drama, The Squid and the         
Whale, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for "Best Performance by         
an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy". 2006 saw Linney appearing           
in the Robin Williams political satire Man of the Year and the comedy Driving             
Lessons (starring Rupert Grint of Harry Potter fame). 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, and The Savages, where             
Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman played siblings. She received her third                 
Academy Award nomination for this film - this time as Lead Actress.                       
                                                                                         
Her important television roles include "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 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. Her               
extensive stage credits on Broadway and elsewhere include Hedda Gabler (for               
which she won a 1994 Joe A. Callaway Award), Holiday (based on the movie                 
starring Katharine Hepburn), and she was nominated for a Tony Award in 2002 as           
Best Actress (Play) for The Crucible, and again in 2005 for Sight Unseen.