Laura Linney

Born: Laura Legett Linney ,
February 5, 1964
New York, New York, USA

Resides: New York

Mother: Ann Leggett Perse (nee Sims), nurse, who lives in Connecticut

Stepmother: Laura Callahan; served as associate director of investments for the Rockefellar Foundation

Father: respected Off-Broadway playwright, Romulus Linney

Half-sister: Susan Linney, book editor; born 1975

Ex-husband: David Adkins, actor; met at Juilliard. Married 1995 - divorced 2000

Pet: A yellow lab named Eleonora Duse, after the actress

Education: Graduated from Brown University in 1986; graduated from the Juilliard School 1990

     Laura Linney came to film via theater, a medium in which she had been involved more or less since birth. The daughter of respected off-Broadway playwright, Romulus Linney, Laura was born in New York City on February 5, 1964. Her parents divorced when she was six months old. Thanks to her father's job, Linney grew up working in the theater, both behind the scenes and, in her late teens, on the stage.
      Following prep school in Massachusetts, she attended both Brown University and Juilliard, and she was soon appearing in a number of Broadway productions. She garnered notice for her roles in plays like The Seagull and Six Degrees of Separation, and won particular acclaim for her performance in Hedda Gabler.
     Linney made her onscreen debut in 1992 with a small role as a teacher in Lorenzo's Oil, but her claim to fame was as Meryl Burbank in The Truman Show (1998) opposite Jim Carrey.