Laura Linney

Interview By: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com

Born into a theatrical family (her father's a respected playwright), Laura Linney naturally gravitated to a career on stage. Her close relationship with the theater has no doubt formed her into the powerful acting force she is today. Flawed and complicated characters have become her specialty, most-notably starting with her Academy-award nominated role playing Mark Ruffalo's sister in You Can Count on Me. Her latest role harkens back to those themes of family bonds. In The Savages,Linney plays the emotional wreck Wendy Savage, a struggling playwright who must care for her elderly father (Philip Bosco) when dementia begins to set in. Along with her brother Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the two must overcome past hurts by caring for a parent who never cared for them. Doing so ultimately strengthens their relationship with each other.

'For me it's more of a story about siblings getting to know each other in a way that they haven't,' Linney says. 'The context and the backdrop with which they've been able to do that is the challenge of elder care with a parent who didn't love them. And that's the thing that always gets me about this movie is that the question of what do you do, how do you care for a parent who didn't love you' I mean, do you become a better person; do you take care of them' Do you walk away' What do you do with that''

The film grapples with some tough questions, and the answers don't come easily. 'The thing that I loved about this movie and why I thought the script was on a whole different level is that it doesn't force-feed the audience with every single answer about everything,' Linney says. 'What you learn about their past you see in their present behavior'What I love is that clearly Phil Hoffman's character and my character have had different experiences and you can see just by how they've developed. Clearly there was abuse on his part and neglect on mine, and it completely informs how we relate to Phil Bosco at that moment. I'm still desperately trying to have a relationship with him, she doesn't give up. And Phil is sort of, let it go. Figuring all that stuff out for an actor is great fun.'

Wendy and Jon may not have all the answers, but to see them try to handle the situation they are in makes for one interesting film. 'They do the best they can with what they have,' Linney says. 'And both of these protagonists, Jon and Wendy, are deeply flawed and in complete arrested development. What the experience does is give them for the first time a real sense of 'I belong to you, you belong to me' in a way that certainly they didn't have at the beginning of the movie when they're very separate. They're life is sort of jolted forward; they don't have a choice. It rocks their world in a way that they're not prepared for, nor did they ask for.'

The film's realistic portrayal of nursing homes and issues of mortality particularly resonated with Linney. 'My grandmother lived her last year and half in a very nice nursing home actually outside of Washington DC and my grandfather was in the same home before that,' she said. 'So I certainly know what it is, certainly remember what it is, to put someone in that room for the first time and then walk away and leave them there for the first night. That is brutal. It is brutal for everybody. And it's sort of an area that everybody looks at with great dread because it's sort of compartmentalized and put to the side, but if you are fortunate enough to really have the privilege to help someone through their last years there's a lot that you can do to make it as easy as possible. Not that it will ever be easy, but certainly if you try to take out the areas of stress way before hand you can help yourself a lot.'

While Linney realized making The Savages was a special experience, the audiences' reaction to it has still managed to surprise her. 'When you're working on a film like this you're not thinking about the overall context,' she said. 'You're thinking about your character and what's happening, so I wasn't even really aware of how this would connect with people in the way that it has been since we've been screening it.'

She adds, 'This is deeply personal stuff that people don't talk about but it's the stuff that connects everybody to everybody else. It's these experiences that connect human beings to each other.'

Linney is sure to keep connecting to audiences through her performances. Next up is the HBO miniseries John Adams, which airs in March and co-stars Paul Giamatti. Then she's back on stage in the spring for a play at the Roundabout Theater. Must be those theater genes!