Stah-lit express - Laura Linney - Interview

Possessed of a tomboyish allure, actress Laura Leggett Linney inspires a fantasy of hugs and snuggling moro than one of passionate embraces. She has an earnestness and generosity seldom seen onscreen nowadays, qualities no doubt handed down to her by her Southern parents, Ann Leggett Perse and playwright Romulus Linney, despite the fact that they divorced six months after their daughter's birth. Now thirty-three and married to fellow Juilliard alum David Adkins, the Manhattan-born Linney's career is well on its way.

As an actress, she never seems to be trying too hard. It's a subtle, disarming quality, one that first caught the attention of fans of the 1994 PBS miniseries Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, and then of the crowds who thronged to see her leap to leading ladydom in Congo (1995) and Primal Fear (1996). Linney's latest warm-blooded incarnation is that of Clint Eastwood's estranged daughter in the recently released political thriller Absolute Power. Later this year she stars opposite Jim Carrey in Peter Weir's The Truman Show.

DEVON JACKSON: Although you have a younger half-sister, you were mostly brought up as an only child. Were you eccentric?

LAURA LINNEY: My wheels were always spinning and I would do wild dances around the room. There was a lot of time to be alone. I have memories of sitting in front of the record player and going into the whole world of the albums I listened to: Winnie-the-Pooh, old Walt Disney records, the Laurence Olivier version of Three Sisters, Hedda Gabler with Claire Bloom, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Parts of me were very developed - I was very articulate and verbal - but I had a hard time learning how to read. So I was a little unbalanced.

DJ: Did you play sports as a kid?

LL: No. The competitive thing always freaked me out. They always wanted me to play basketball because I was so tall, but it made me nervous. I did a lot of dance and I had a few years when I was in love with horses, so I did equestrian sports. I loved to jump.

DJ: You don't come off as very jaded or cynical. Are people surprised when they find out you're not the fresh-faced woman from Ohio you played in Tales of the City?

LL: I was jaded, I was cynical, which is why I left for Massachusetts in the first place. I knew I had to leave or it would've been disastrous for me. But, year, a lot of people think I'm from Iowa or somewhere.

DJ: After a year at Northwestern University, you transferred to Brown to study theater and then went straight to Juilliard. Why no break?

LL: One of the greatest things about my life has been my education. It's not that I was a great student, it's that I was really good in a community environment. Being an only child from a divorced home, to be put in a community where people relied on one another was heaven for me. I think that's why I love the theater so much.

DJ: Can doing a movie be as satisfying a communal experience as a play?

LL: To a degree. It's easier when you're on location and not in Los Angeles, where there's that odd hierarchy: "Oh, the stah. Don't approach the stah." Film was a very unexpected thing for me. I didn't grow up wanting to be a film actress. I have no qualms about it now - it's great - but I thought I was going to be at the Actors Theatre of Louisville or somewhere and living on a farm. Film is all an adventure, and it's something I'm still learning.

DJ: In what ways?

LL: I'm trying to see how far I can go. I tend to be cautious. I'm not as free in front of a camera as I am onstage, and I don't feel like I'm breathing as deeply. When you switch from theater to film, people say you're too big - physically. So consequently, you try to be very small. You shut everything off, and that's not right. You have to learn to let everything flow; it's about not being self-conscious or nervous.

DJ: When you got the lead in Congo, did your theater peers accuse you of sellIng out?

LL: I'm sure there are people who thought that. But it's so difficult to be an actor, and if you have the opportunity to do anything - and it's not an affront to society - most people are pretty happy for you. Me running through the jungle with a gun in my hands sent my friends and me into hysterics. Of course, some people will always go out of their way to throw a little toad in your direction. The thing that gets under my skin with people in the movie industry is that some of them think you only do theater when you can't get film work. How can they dismiss an art that's been around for so long?

DJ: I heard that for your Primal Fear screen test you had to run through the entire script.

LL: Yes, on camera. Everybody was very dubious about me. They just knew me as the girl with the gun in the monkey movie [Congo]. My main concern was not so much getting the role as not making Greg [Gregory Hoblit, Primal Fear's director] look like an idiot. But I earned the role.

DJ: Then Clint Eastwood offered you one in Absolute Power.

LL: I couldn't believe it. That was surreal. The whole movie was surreal.

DJ: Have the Hollywood image makers been working on you, suggesting how you should present yourself to the public?

LL: Oh, how do you do that? There was a concern during Primal Fear, though, because my character [Janet Venable] was such a rottweiler. I was encouraged to participate in the press junkets so people would see that I'm not a monster, or so cold and tough. But that came from friends of mine who know more about the business than I do - not from a bunch of image makers.

DJ: What about all this weird fan mail you get for Congo?

LL: I don't know. I get a lot of young German boys writing to me. They like blondes with guns, I guess.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group