Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theater.
Linney mother, Miriam Anderson "Ann" Perse, is a nurse who worked at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and her father, Romulus Linney, is a well-known playwright and professor. Linney's paternal great-great-grandfather was Republican U.S. Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney. Despite her pedigree, Linney grew up living with her mother in a small one-bedroom apartment in modest circumstances after her parents' divorce. She has a half-sister, Susan, from her father's second marriage. Linney graduated from the Northfield Mount Hermon School in 1982. She then attended Northwestern University before transferring to Brown University, where she studied acting with Jim Barnhill and John Emigh, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986. Linney then went on to study acting at the Juilliard School. She feels that it was necessary for her art to attend graduate school.
Linney appeared in minor roles in a few early 1990s films, including Dave in 1993, before coming to prominence in the public television mini-series Tales of the City. She made her Hollywood breakthrough in 1998 when she played Jim Carrey's wife in The Truman Show, for which she received critical acclaim. In 2000, Linney was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the lower-budget film You Can Count on Me.
Linney married David Adkins in 1995. They divorced in 2000. In 2007, she became engaged to Marc Schauer, a real estate agent from Telluride, Colorado.