Laura Linney

Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress and director. She is recognized for her extensive work across film, television, and theatre. Over the course of her career, she has earned numerous accolades, including four Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, alongside nominations for three Academy Awards, five Tony Awards, and a BAFTA Award.

Linney was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Miriam Anderson "Ann" Perse, a nurse, and Romulus Zachariah Linney IV, a playwright and professor. She began acting in local theatre at age eleven while spending summers in New Hampshire. She graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon School in 1982, attended Northwestern University, and transferred to Brown University, where she studied acting and graduated in 1986. She subsequently completed her acting training at the Juilliard School in 1990.

After making her New York stage debut in an Off-Broadway production of The Seagull in 1990, Linney made her film debut with a minor role in Lorenzo's Oil (1992). In 1993, she took on the role of Mary Ann Singleton in the television adaptation of Tales of the City, later reprising the character in 1998, 2001, and 2019. Following roles in film thrillers such as Congo (1995) and Primal Fear (1996), Linney achieved a major Hollywood breakthrough playing Meryl Burbank in The Truman Show (1998).

In 2000, Linney earned her first Academy Award nomination for her lead performance in You Can Count on Me. She secured additional Academy Award nominations for her performances in Kinsey (2004) and The Savages (2007). Her other notable film projects from the 2000s and 2010s include Mystic River (2003), Love Actually (2003), The Squid and the Whale (2005), The Nanny Diaries (2007), Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), Mr. Holmes (2015), and Sully (2016). In 2020, she appeared in the feature films Falling and The Roads Not Taken.

On television, Linney won her first Primetime Emmy Award for the television film Wild Iris (2001), followed by Emmy-winning roles in the sitcom Frasier and the HBO miniseries John Adams (2008). From 2010 to 2013, she starred as the lead and served as an executive producer on the Showtime series The Big C, earning a Golden Globe Award and a fourth Emmy. She later starred in the Netflix crime drama series Ozark from 2017 to 2022, receiving multiple Primetime Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

Linney has maintained an active stage career on Broadway and in London, receiving Tony Award nominations for her roles in The Crucible (2002), Sight Unseen (2004), Time Stands Still (2010), The Little Foxes (2017), and My Name Is Lucy Barton (2020). In addition to her acting work, she began hosting the PBS series Masterpiece Classic in 2009 and holds honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from both Brown University and the Juilliard School.