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Laura Linney was born in New York City. Her father, Romulus
Linney, is a well-known playwright and her mother, Ann Leggett
Perse, is a nurse who worked at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center in New York City; she has a half-sister, Susan,
from her father's second marriage. Linney was educated at the
Northfield Mount Hermon School and Brown University, where she
graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986. She also trained at
the Juilliard School and at the Moscow Art Theatre.
Laura Linney appeared in minor roles in a few early 1990s films,
before being cast in a series of high-profile thrillers,
including Congo, Primal Fear and Absolute Power. Her important
television roles include "Mary Ann Singleton" in the television
adaptations of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books. Her
extensive stage credits on Broadway and elsewhere include Hedda
Gabler, Holiday (based on the movie starring Katharine Hepburn),
and The Crucible.
In 2000, Laura Linney 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. The same year, she won an 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.
In 2005, Linney starred in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (a horror
movie and courtroom drama), and the very well-reviewed comedy,
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".
Laura Linney's upcoming films will include the political satire
Man of the Year, 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 will play siblings.
Linney was married to David Adkins, whom she met at Julliard,
from 1995 to 2000, and has dated actor Eric Stoltz. She has a
yellow Labrador named Eleonora Duse, after the well-known
actress.

Film List
This Laura Linney Biography Page is Copyright The Planets © 2004 - 2006 Chuck Ayoub