Laura Linney: What I know now

April 5, 2021

WHO

THE ACTRESS OPENS UP ABOUT FAME, FALLING IN LOVE AND THE JOY OF BECOMING A MUM LATER IN LIFE

BEFORE SHE WAS FAMOUS

Linney’s big break came when she starred with Chloe Webb and Marcus D’Amico (above) in the 1993 miniseries Tales of the City. She reprised her role as Mary Ann Singleton in the 2019 Netflix revival. The series is based on novels by Armistead Maupin, whom Linney has called “the greatest man I’ve ever known”. She named her son Bennett Armistead after him.

Laura Linney is having a good month. On February 3 the actress nabbed a Golden Globe nomination for her role on the hit Netflix show Ozark. The following day she got a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for the same show. The day after that she celebrated her 57th birthday. She’s been earning acclaim for decades, but “I don’t take anything for granted”, says the New York native, who attributes her work ethic to her mother, Ann Leggett, an oncology nurse, and her father, playwright Romulus Linney. “I grew up around people who worked very hard with long hours under difficult circumstances,” she says. “They taught me that grit is an important quality to have.”

Linney’s first love was theatre. After graduating from the prestigious Juilliard School in 1990, she got her start performing on Broadway before transitioning to movies. In 2001 she was nominated for her first Oscar for the film You Can Count on Me, and she has gone on to earn two more nominations – for Kinsey in 2005 and The Savages in 2008. Her latest movie (out now on demand) is the Viggo Mortensen-directed drama