DarkMode/LightMode
Light Mode

“You Can Count on Me”: Laura Linney Interview

HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 3, 2001 — As hard as it is to believe, Laura Linney had never thought of becoming a film actress.

Let alone a good one.

“Film was a very foreign thing for me. I just thought I wouldn’t be any good at it. I was camera shy, and I had a really hard time thinking that it is something that I would be really good at,” Linney says in an interview with Hollywood.com on Dec. 15.

- Advertisement -

Yes, this coming from the 36-year-old actress whose ace performance in the arthouse film “You Can Count on Me” has catapulted her to the top of the “one-to-watch” list, with a best actress Golden Globe nomination and nods from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Toronto Film Critics Association to show for.

The film — which stars Linney as a single mother who must juggle with raising her 8-year-old son (Rory Culkin) and her sibling obligations to her oft-troubled brother (Mark Ruffalo) — has become the year’s little-film-that-could ever since it walked out of Sundance 2000 with a best dramatic film and a best screenplay award for director-writer Kenneth Lonergan.

And that was only the beginning. Despite the film’s relatively small release, Lonergan, Ruffalo and Linney have been raking up accolades big and small, to the point where the actress is virtually assured a Best Actress nod for this year’s Oscars.

“It’s very unexpected, and I’m thrilled out of my mind. It’s not only good for me personally but also for the movie, which is so small that any attention that any of us get will help it tremendously. It means a little more to us as a group when one person is recognized,” Linney says.

The New York-born Linney — to paraphrase the actress — is first and foremost a product of the stage. Her father was a playwright and she herself is a graduate of Julliard. Her first gig out of school was as the original understudy for “Six Degrees of Separation” at the Lincoln Center, and she has done backstage work on Broadway.

Naturally, stage acting came easy for Linney in that environment, but film — that’s a different story all together. Despite her initial reservations, the transition from theater to film has been a relatively smooth and rewarding one for the actress.

- Advertisement -

By Linney’s account, she has come along the Hollywood route in a “backward” kind of way, with a career that started off on big-budget films such as “The Truman Show” and “Absolute Power” and then backsliding into more indie-minded, low-budget works such as “You Can Count on Me” and the period piece The House of Mirth.”

Ironically, it is the smaller projects — epitomized by Lonergan’s film (along with a severe pay cut at $5,000 for the part, Linney recalls) — that have given her the first real chance to really strut her stuff.

“This is a more demanding role, it’s more of an acting [role],” Linney explains. “The thing that was great about Kenny [Lonergan] is that he let us actually act. A lot of time these scripts encapsulate you so there’s no room to act, [where] everything is explained. What this movie allowed us to do is to have the room to actually interact with each other. And that’s unusual in a sense, [and] it is a godsend for an actor.”

Having shot four indie films back to back, Linney is gearing up to begin production on the paranormal thriller “Mothman Prophecies” opposite Richard Gere. But be it big-budget flicks or tiny festival fares, the actress insists that only one thing matters when it comes to choosing her next projects.

“What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I’ll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.”

And at the rate things are going, the actress’s wish is well within grasp.

- Advertisement -

“You Can Count on Me” is playing in selected cities.

- Advertisement -