Laura Linney is a much in-demand actress thanks to the acclaim that she has earned for her two decades in film, but Linney has has also excelled both in television and on the New York stage.
In fact, she has become an awards magnet in all three media. On Broadway, Linney has received four Tony Award nominations. For her film work, she has earned three Academy Award nominations (for 2000’s “You Can Count on Me,” 2004’s “Kinsey” and 2007’s “The Savages”), three Golden Globe nods and three nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award. And for television, she has won four Emmy Awards from six nominations, two Golden Globes from three nods and a SAG Award from her two nominations. She’s been on an awards roll as of late with Netflix’s “Ozark,” which brought her recent bids at the Emmys and SAG. A pretty good track record that any actor would envy.
Let’s count down her 12 best screen performances and rank them from worst to best. Our list above includes the films mentioned above, plus “Love Actually,” “Mystic River,” “The Squid and the Whale” and more. And here’s a toast to the great Laura Linney!
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12. BREACH (2007)
Image Credit: Michael Gibson/Universal/Ske/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Billy Ray. Writers: Billy Ray, Adam Mazer, William Rotko. Starring Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert.
Linney’s supporting role in Billy Ray’s political thriller is a key one as Kate Burroughs, an FBI handler who keeps agents who are working undercover on track. One such agent is Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe), who has been placed to watch senior agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), who is suspected of being a sexual deviant. It is Kate who must reveal to Eric that the real reason for his surveillance is that Hanssen is suspected of being a spy for the Russians. Linney has carved out an “all business” side to several of her portrayals, and that is part of the skill set that she puts to good use here.
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11. HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (2012)
Image Credit: Daybreak/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Roger Michell. Writer: Richard Nelson. Starring Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Samuel West, Olivia Colman.
Linney had one of her most unusual roles in Roger Michell’s film that views the private life of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray) through the eyes of his distant cousin Daisy (Linney), who is visiting Franklin’s mother. Daisy, with whom the President may or may not have had a romantic relationship, becomes Franklin’s confidante, particularly in the days of an important meeting with King George VI (Samuel West) and Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman playing yet another queen). Linney expertly reveals layers of Daisy’s character to us, introducing her as a shy wallflower, then blossoming as a trusted friend.
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10. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (2000)
Image Credit: Jaap Buitendijk/Granada/Arts Council/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Terence Davies, based on the novel by Edith Wharton. Starring Gillian Anderson, Dan Aykroyd, Laura Linney, Eric Stoltz.
Linney got the chance to work with the great British director Terence Davies on his adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel. Once prominent but now destitute socialite Lily Bart (Gillian Anderson) comes across incriminating letters written by the wealthy Bertha Dorset (Linney), who has been having a secret affair with lawyer Lawrence Selden (Eric Stoltz), a man to whom Lily is hopelessly attracted. Linney plays a rare antagonist role here and demonstrates that she clearly has the grit to pull it off.
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9. SULLY (2016)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Clint Eastwood. Writer: Todd Komarnicki. Starring Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney.
One of the most familiar roles that Linney has played in her film career is that of a wife. Some of those spouses are dutiful and a few can be more complex than that. In Clint Eastwood’s “Sully,” Linney plays the title character’s wife Lorraine as a woman who is totally reactive. Most of her scenes in the film are on the phone with Sully (Tom Hanks), who tries to describe the hell through which he is going yet trying to assure her that he is fine. For her part, Linney’s Lorraine is doing her best to be supportive at the other end of the call yet is terrified when hearing of her husband’s experiences. It’s a duet between husband and wife which is its own drama within the larger movie of “Sully.”
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8. PRIMAL FEAR (1996)
Image Credit: Ron Phillips/Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Gregory Hoblit. Writers: Steve Shagan, Ann Biderman. Starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Edward Norton.
In Gregory Hobbit’s legal thriller, Linney plays prosecuting attorney Janet Venable, who is arguing a murder case involving teenage altar boy Aaron Stampler (Oscar nominee Edward Norton). The challenge for Janet is that Stampler is being defended by her ex-lover Martin Vail (Richard Gere), a romantic complication that she does not need in prosecuting a difficult trial. The hugely competitive Vail has evidence that would provide Janet an advantage in the trial but hesitates to reveal it because it would help to convict his client. Linney makes an effective foil for Gere, while Norton steals the film.
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7. THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Peter Weir. Writer: Andrew Niccol. Starring Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Ed Harris, Noah Emmerich.
One of Linney’s biggest box-office hits, Peter Weir’s sci-fi satire “The Truman Show” featured her playing an actress, Hannah Gill, who is posing as a nurse named Meryl, the wife of the unsuspecting Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), who is the subject of a reality show in which his every move in his real life is captured by cameras. Let’s get this straight — Linney, an actress, is playing an actress who is playing a nurse. Got it. It’s one of Linney’s most complicated roles and one in which she shines.
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6. LOVE ACTUALLY (2003)
Image Credit: Peter Mountain/Universal/Dna/Working Title/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Richard Curtis. Starring Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman.
Love it or hate it, Richard Curtis’ “Love Actually” has become a movie staple of the Christmas season. (Put me down in the “love it” column.) Linney is one of the few American actors in Curtis’ (mostly British) all-star cast as Sarah, an employee of the graphic design firm where Harry (Alan Rickman) also works. Sarah has always had a thing for the firm’s creative director Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), but just as their holiday date is getting real, Sarah is interrupted by a call from her mentally-ill brother Michael (Michael Fitzgerald), who is spending his Christmas alone at an institution. I suspect that, long after a few of Linney’s films are forgotten, her work in “Love Actually” will live on.
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5. MYSTIC RIVER (2003)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Clint Eastwood. Writer: Brian Helgeland. Starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laura Linney.
Linney has played quite a few wives in her film career, but none are as subtly diabolical as her Annabeth Markum in Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River.” The wife of Jimmy Markum (Oscar winner Sean Penn), a Massachusetts con who is obsessed with finding the killer of his teenage daughter, and, thinking that he has found him, Jimmy kills him, only to learn that the victim didn’t do it. In the film’s most chilling moment, Annabeth bucks up her husband in the bedroom, saying that he’s a king who could rule this town and that everyone else there is weak except for them. It gives the mystery an added dimension, and it is Linney’s characterization that totally creates the chills. As part of the cast of “Mystic River,” Linney received her second Screen Actors Guild nomination.
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4. THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005)
Image Credit: Samuel Goldwyn Llc/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Noah Baumbach. Starring Laura Linney, Jeff Daniels, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline.
Linney earned her third Golden Globe nomination for her performance in this Noah Baumbach film as Joan Berkman, a newly-acclaimed writer who grows dissatisfied with the professional decline of her novelist husband Bernard (Jeff Daniels), so she begins cheating on him. Eventually the marriage disintegrates, and they must tell their two sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline), that they are separating. The boys react in their own way to news of his parents’ marital conflict, with each of them taking different sides. Walt, in particular, has a difficult time, treating his girlfriend badly the same way his father treated Joan. Baumbach’s script creates particularly complex characters, and Linney makes the most of that complexity.
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3. THE SAVAGES (2007)
Image Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Tamara Jenkins. Starring Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco.
I don’t know how Linney scopes out great scripts with such great parts for her, but here’s another one — Tamara Jenkins’ terrific “The Savages.” Here she’s got a big juicy part as Wendy, the single sibling of also-single Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who though estranged from one another, come together to care for their father Lenny (Philip Bosco), who is quickly being overcome by dementia. Although the story of their family history is strong, it’s the one-on-one acting duet between Linney and Hoffman here that’s the real show. For her performance as Wendy, Linney received her third Academy Award nomination.
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2. KINSEY (2004)
Image Credit: Ken Regan/20th Century Fox/American Zoetrope/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Bill Condon. Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O’Donnell, John Lithgow, Timothy Hutton.
Although the landmark sexual study known familiarly as The Kinsey Report is most associated with Prof. Alfred Kinsey (Liam Nelson), it should also be equally credited to sex researcher Clara McMillen (Linney), who also happened to be Mrs. Alfred Kinsey. In Linney’s hands, Clara is not someone who lives in the shadow of her husband but a woman who stands up to be an equal part of a team. For her performance as Clara, Linney earned her second Academy Award nomination, her second Golden Globe nod and her third Screen Actors Guild bid.
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1. YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (2000)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Kenneth Lonergan. Starring Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Rory Culkin.
Linney earned her first Academy Award nomination, her first Golden Globe nod and her first Screen Actors Guild Award bid for her performance as Sammy Prescott, a single mom still living in her home town in upstate New York. As kids, Sammy and her brother Terry (Mark Ruffalo) lost their parents in a car accident, and since then, she has had a complicated relationship with her brother, who has bummed around the country getting in and out of trouble. One day he shows up on her doorstep looking to borrow money, and after his girlfriend attempts suicide, Terry asks if he can extend his stay with Sammy. She’s delighted, but Terry’s presence unlocks a torrent of long-suppressed emotions in his sister. Linney delivers a powerful character study that kicked her film career up to another level.
