Her father is respected Off-Broadway playwright Romulus Linney.
Has a sister, Susan Linney.
Graduated from Brown University in 1986.
1990 graduate of the Juilliard School
Was nominated for Broadway's 2002 Tony Award as Best Actress (Play) for portraying Elizabeth Proctor in a revival of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible."
Graduated Northfield Mount Hermon School in 1982
Her mother is a nurse.
She says that she was the worst at reading and writing in her class.
Clint Eastwood picked her for the part of Kate Whitney in his new movie Absolute Power (1997) after he saw her performance in Primal Fear (1996).
Gained 30 pounds for her role in Kinsey (2004), mainly by eating Krispy Kreme glazed dough nuts.
Has a yellow Labrador dog that she named Eleonora Duse, after the actress.
Lives on a large estate in Connecticut near her friends Kevin Bacon and Michael J. Fox.
Laura Linney was given the script for The Squid and the Whale (2005) by Eric Stoltz, her boyfriend at that time, while they were filming The House of Mirth (2000) in 2000. She agreed to do the film immediately, but it took four years to raise the financing.
Won the 1994 Joe A. Callaway Award, for Best Performance in a Classic Drama, for her performance as Thea Elvsted in "Hedda Gabler."
Nominated for the 2005 Tony Award for "Sight Unseen" (Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play).
Laura Linney Detailed Biography
Laura Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an Oscar-nominated American actress.
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.
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, 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. 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".
