To be noticed, Laura Linney had to get ordinary.
“Somehow, I had acquired this image of the rich girl from Connecticut — WASPy, and all that carries with it,” says Linney. “And in the movie business, breaking out of that box they consign you to can be difficult. I just got lucky this time. I’m so proud of this movie I could burst.”
You couldn’t be a lot more ordinary — or surprising — than the small-town savings and loan officer Linney plays in “You Can Count On Me,” the directing debut of playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan. Among the few unqualified hits of both this year’s Sundance and Toronto International film festivals, “You Can Count On Me” and Linney are benefiting from one of the shallowest Oscar pools in years. With Hollywood producing precious few films and performances worthy of Academy Awards nomination, the understated movie and Linney have turned into bona fide contenders.
“I’ve gone the opposite direction of a lot of actors,” says Linney, who came to the independent “You Can Count On Me” after a decade of television roles and Hollywood films. “I was lucky enough to walk right off the theater planet and into the working-actor world, so I didn’t get involved in that indie-movie scene a lot of my friends went through. I was like the world’s oldest indie virgin.”
Linney, 36, says her birthright — she’s the daughter of New York playwright Romulus Linney — and her degrees (theater history from Brown, performance from Juilliard) have contributed to the “very false impression” that she was upper crust. In fact, her parents divorced when she was a child, her mother worked long hours as a nurse and the schools were made possible by scholarships.
She spent most of her time at Juilliard, she says, as a stagehand, and recalls “embarrassing myself as a very bad Hedda Gabler.” She had, she allows, improved considerably by the time she played that title role on a New York stage, where she naturally gravitated after graduation. In less than two years after leaving school, she had received a Drama Desk nomination and Theater World Award for her performance in the play “Sight Unseen,” and won a role on the controversial PBS mini-series “Tales of the City,” based on Armistead Maupin’s serialized newspaper fiction depicting life in 1980s San Francisco.
“It was a very exciting time for me,” says Linney. “I was learning a lot, working with great people, doing what I wanted. Doing movies was not part of any master plan, but I started going on auditions, and getting parts and the next thing I knew I was in the jungle doing `Congo’ or trying courtroom cases with Richard Gere (`Primal Fear’).”
Linney’s highest profile role prior to “You Can Count on Me” was as Jim Carrey’s wife — or more specifically, an actress playing his wife — in “The Truman Show.”
“Laura has this perfectly poised exterior and this really fascinating interior that she allows audiences to glimpse for just a second of two, so you say `Oh, what was that?'” says “Truman Show” director Peter Weir, who picked Linney for the part over a number of actors with more marquee value. “It’s easy to compare Laura to Meryl Streep because of that ability she has to harbor a secret, but she’s unique, really. A frighteningly good actor.”
Linney was already acquainted with Lonergan, a member of New York’s Naked Angels theater cooperative and Drama Desk winner for his play “The Is Our Youth,” when he called to talk about the role of Sammy in “You Can Count On Me.” “It’s small world,” says Linney of New York’s theater community. “Everybody was aware of Kenny and how talented he was, so I was predisposed to work with him. But when I got the script, I was just like, `Wow, I’m going to be allowed to play her?'”
“Her” is Sammy Prescott, a single mother in upstate New York looking forward to a reunion with her younger brother, Terry (played by Mark Ruffalo), until he actually shows up. Sammy, responsible to a fault, wants Terry to grow up and settle down. Terry, unreliable as he is irresistible, wants his sister to get off his back, and while she’s at it, take a chance or two — which to her own surprise, she does.
“It’s certainly the most interesting character I’ve ever played in a movie,” says Linney. “Part of Sammy I felt like I knew intimately, and then there was another part of her that just threw me for a loop, and I hope she has that effect on people who see the movie, too. The conflict between her and Terry isn’t contrived movie conflict, it’s the stuff of real relationships.
“Sammy looks at her brother like he’s a child, because he acts like a child. But Terry doesn’t want a mom, he wants a sister. She’s always been a mom, so how is she supposed to act now? She’s always acted out of duty and faith, and here’s her only relative acting as if that’s unimportant. Well, then, her life’s been unimportant. Who can bear to think that?”
“You Can Count On Me” capped a big year for Linney that also saw her reviving “Uncle Vanya” on Broadway with Derek Jacobi, and co-starring with Gillian Anderson in “The House of Mirth.” The latter, based on the novel by Edith Wharton, is set to make the art-house rounds early next year.
Any award nominations for “You Can Count On Me,” she says, “would be great if it could help the movie,” but would probably embarrass her if “Kenny and Mark didn’t get noticed as well. I am so proud of what we did, but we did it together.”
