- Born
- Birth nameLaura Leggett Linney
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- 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 after 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.- IMDb mini biography by: Larry-115
- SpousesMarc Schauer(May 2, 2009 - present) (1 child)David Adkins(September 2, 1995 - 2000) (divorced)
- ChildrenBennett Armistead Schauer
- ParentsMiriam Anderson Leggett
- RelativesSusan Linney(Sibling)
- Frequent works with Ethan Hawke
- Was once a teacher for deaf and autistic children.
- Filmed Mystic River (2003) in Boston, US, while filming Love Actually (2003) in London, UK. She flew across the Atlantic several times in a short manner of time, in order to complete filming on both movies.
- Attended and graduated from the Juilliard School in New York City (1990).
- Less than a month before turning 50, she gave birth to her first child, a son Bennett Armistead Schauer on January 8, 2014. Child's father is her husband, Marc Schauer.
- Gained about 20 pounds for her role in Kinsey (2004), mainly by eating Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts.
- [on Jim Carrey]: He has tremendous charm. He has an enormous heart, just a big big heart. I think that is the thing. I think if you look at his other work you can see that there, which is what makes his characters more than just mimicry. I think that is why his work has hit so hard. Because there is just more there. So with this one, you see more of his humanity.
- [on her character on The Truman Show (1998)]: Well the thing that was interesting was that we sort of did these back stories about these characters and where they were and what was going on with them. And when the movie picks up, Hanna Gill, who plays Meryl Burbank, is aware of the fact that she is losing her influence over Truman. He's not happy at home. He's beginning to get agitated. He's beginning to think of things outside the house, and she can feel that she is losing her power. So consequently the smile gets bigger and bigger and the desperation, that is why there is that intense undertow to her. Because she knows she is losing it.
- [on her character in The Truman Show (1998)]: The concept of The Truman Show - it was so much fun. What gave us all an additional challenge was that those of us who were the cast play the actors but playing a role. So we did all this elaborate back-story. So I made up my actress name Hanna Gill, who plays Meryl Burbank, who is married to Truman Burbank. So we did all this double layering of character work not really knowing what was going to come through. I'm glad that some of the people who have seen the movie can say that they can actually see it in all of us. All of us who play the characters surrounding Jim (Jim Carrey) in the film, that they can see the double layer.
- [on her father]: My parents were divorced and I didn't grow up with him, but I spent a lot of time around him and his influence on me has been profound.
- [on her fame]: I don't consider myself a celebrity and I don't consider myself a star.
- Ozark (2017) - $300,000 per episode
- You Can Count on Me (2000) - $10,000
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