Subject matters: Laura Linney

Published on Wednesday 28 May 2008 22:01

Actress Laura Linney isn't one for loads of money. She'd rather have a challenging role – and she's made a speciality of them, including her latest in The Savages

'MY GOAL is not to make a lot of money or achieve financial security," explains the uncommonly glamorous actress Laura Linney, sitting in a London hotel room dressed in a tight-fitting knee-length angora cardigan, grey slacks and hazardously high heels.

"I think people get a little crazy about money and, even though I don't make the millions of dollars some make, I certainly do well, have a privileged life and do the films I find interesting and challenging."

For Linney, these "interesting" roles are often also irksome characters: she was the disapproving sister in her Oscar-nominated You Can Count on Me, the adulterous mother in The Squid and the Whale, and Jim Carrey's disingenuous spouse in The Truman Show.

For her latest film, The Savages, a deliciously acerbic two hours of bible-black comedy written and directed by Tamara Jenkins (released on DVD this week) Linney got her third Oscar nomination – having taken on yet another role that forced her to face issues most of us would rather avoid.

The film sees her play Wendy Savage, a control freak, fantasist and sister to Jon, a sullen college professor who, perfectly realised by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, picks up a few extra bucks by writing dull books about the theatre. Wendy and Jon have been living separate lives, but are drawn together when their estranged father succumbs todementia, is kicked out of his "retirement community" in Arizona and left to the mercy of the two horrified and unprepared siblings.

"For this I had to confront issues that fill me with absolute dread," says Linney. "It made me think about getting my own will in order. I went and spoke to those I am solely responsible for and went through all that horrible will stuff together and, with a great sense of humour, made a lot of decisions. But what interested me was that my character, Wendy, is also someone who has to care for a parent who didn't love them."

That gave the part a "whole other dynamic", says Linney. "What do you do when it's a parent who doesn't love you? Do you become the better person or do you punish them? What do you do now you are in a position of power?"

It's an uncomfortable question with no easy answer and we're both silent as we ponder it until she smiles and pulls us back to earth. "But the script and story were so beautifully written and the characters were so wonderful to work with."

Indeed, the script won Jenkins an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay and got four awards from American Film Critics Circles.

Another element that attracted Linney was the cast. "Working with Phil (Seymour Hoffman] was ideal. I loved working with him. We're both story people. It was easy, it was fun and we pushed each other along with no fear on either side."

Undeniably, the chemistry between the two is a joy to watch – especially when dealing with their cantankerous father, wonderfully rendered by Philip Bosco.

"I have watched Phil Bosco my entire life on stage and so has Phil Hoffman as we're also both theatre people. He is a giant in the New York theatre," she enthuses . And for her, New York theatre is where it all began. The daughter of Ann Perse, a cancer nurse, and New York playwright Romulus Linney, she was born in the city almost 44 years ago.

"My parents were divorced when I was very young and I didn't grow up with my father," she says. "But I spent a lot of time with him, he had a profound influence on me, and I was drawn to the theatre like a homing pigeon."

After studying at the celebrated Juilliard School of Drama, she had a spell as a teacher of deaf and autistic children, then notched up a clutch of awards on the New York stage in plays such as Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

"I learned the big life lessons from the theatre," she recalls, although she says she now loves film and stage equally.

Still, it couldn't have been easy going from being the queen of the New York stage aged 28 to her first film roles – bit parts – in the likes of Lorenzo's Oil.

Yet she must have done something right, as her next role was the lead in the hugely successful TV adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of The City, as Mary Ann Singleton, a nave young gal from Ohio viewing the sexually liberated conurbation of late 1960s San Francisco.

But she says her big break came when Richard Gere contacted her in 1996 and asked her to appear opposite him as his former girlfriend and ambitious assistant DA, Janet Venerable, in Primal Fear. "I had no idea what I was doing as a film actress then but the director, Greg Hoblit, really helped me, as did Richard Gere and I learned a lot."

The part later attracted the attention of Clint Eastwood who wasted no time in casting her as his daughter in his big screen adaptation of David Baldacci's novel of the same name, Absolute Power opposite Gene Hackman. "Well that was a huge gift because of Clint and I learned so much from him," she reflects. "I love Clint and I am not alone – everybody does, and for good reason.

"Then he asked me to do Mystic River," she adds, still obviously chuffed. "It was an intense subject with some pretty heavyweight actors – Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins – all of whom totally adored him, but it was a very relaxed set because it was Clint; he creates an environment where everyone can do their best work and this is his great talent.

"But you have to be prepared. He won't help you with your preparation or your decisions about your character, but he will create the best environment in which to work. He is like this big invisible hand that guides you through the production."

Not that she's scared of taking on roles which require vulnerability, such as that of Clara, the ever loving, all-forgiving wife of the carnally adventurous "sex" scientist Dr Alfred Kinsey in the 2004 biopic, Kinsey, for which she received her second Oscar nomination.

"What was so interesting for me was that I got to think about my country's relationship to sexuality, especially as we have had a massive conservative swing in the US over the last few years. And what amazed me was that one man blew the lid off this puritan country and turned it on its head.

"What wasn't so interesting," she adds laughing, "was that I was asked to gain about 25 pounds for the role and I must have consumed about 11 bags of sugar by eating glazed doughnuts."

More recently she has managed to notch up another challenging performanceopposite Chris Cooper and Ryan Philippe in Breach, as the humourless FBI bigwig Kate Burroughs, whose dedication to her job knows no bounds.

"I've met women like her – whose personal lives have passed them by, who have given their lives and bought into something that didn't pay off – and I've seen their heartbreak. There was a time that I felt that that was going to be the case with me – when I was married to my work, excruciatingly lonely and that is not a nice place to be. But I'm out of that now."

She has just completed James Ivory's The City of Your Final Destination, with Anthony Hopkins, and is now engaged to Marc Schauer, who has nothing to do with the film business and, she says: "I couldn't be happier."

So what next? "I'll continue as I have, doing maybe two films for me and one for them as sometimes you have to go for the money as jobs can be sporadic; but sometimes I've done films that didn't feel right, and money just isn't worth it.

"The big paycheck certainly doesn't alleviate the emotional discomfort you feel by trying to make something work that doesn't. Being in a production with people who might be well-meaning but not like-minded is not worth it."