Laura Linney's Real Name: Laura Leggett Linney

Quick answer: Laura Linney's documented full name is Laura Leggett Linney. She was born on February 5, 1964, in New York City. She is known for films including You Can Count on Me and Kinsey and for the Netflix series Ozark (Britannica).

Real name and early life

Britannica lists her as also known as Laura Leggett Linney, born February 5, 1964, in New York, New York. The Library of Congress heading is "Linney, Laura." A note in that record gives the expansion Laura Leggett Linney and the same date, placing the birth in New York City. She was born into a theatrical family; her father was the playwright Romulus Linney, Britannica says. She graduated from Brown University in 1986, later studied at the Arts Theatre School in Moscow, and received an M.F.A. from the Juilliard School in New York City in 1990.

Career highlights

She began performing on Broadway soon after finishing at Juilliard in 1990. Britannica lists later Tony Award nominations for The Crucible (2002), Sight Unseen (2004), Time Stands Still (2010), and The Little Foxes (2017). Britannica describes her as an actress best known for playing strong yet vulnerable characters. On screen she appeared in The Truman Show (1998), a comedy-drama about a man whose life is a television show. For You Can Count on Me (2000) she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress, and for Kinsey (2004) a nomination for best supporting actress. She won Emmy Awards for Frasier (2002), the television film Wild Iris (2004), and the HBO miniseries John Adams (2008). Other films include The Squid and the Whale (2005), in which she played a writer navigating a messy divorce in 1980s Brooklyn. She has remained active onstage throughout her screen career, returning repeatedly to Broadway after her 1990 debut. On television she starred in the Netflix series Ozark (2017–22) as the wife of a money launderer, and she later returned as Mary Ann in Netflix's Tales of the City, a 2019 continuation set some 20 years after the original series.

Name notes for searchers

Laura Leggett Linney is the documented full name; she is billed as Laura Linney. Searchers looking for Laura Leggett Linney or Laura Linney are usually aiming at the same person. She should not be confused with her father, the playwright Romulus Linney, or with other actresses named Linney.