Oscars Best Actress: Laura Linney

19 February 2008

Laura Linney

Age:

Role:

Wendy Savage in The Savages

Character:

The last thing the two Savage siblings ever wanted to do was look back at their difficult family history.

Having wriggled their way out from beneath their father’s domineering thumb, they are now firmly cocooned in their own complicated lives.Wendy is a struggling East Village playwright, AKA a temp who spends her days applying for grants, stealing office supplies and dating her very married neighbour.

Jon is a neurotic college professor writing books on obscure subjects in Buffalo.

Then comes the call that informs them that the father they have long feared and avoided, Lenny Savage, is slowly being consumed by dementia and they are the only ones that can help.

Now, as they put their already arrested lives on hold, Wendy and Jon are forced to live together under one roof for the first time since childhood, rediscovering the eccentricities that drove each other crazy.

Previous Oscar Wins:

None

Previous Oscar Nominations:

Two – 2000 Best Actress for You Can Count On Me and 2004 Best Supporting Actress for Kinsey.

Critics:

‘Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney... are in peak form, and together they play off each other with the unfettered, joyous collaboration of great chamber musicians.’ (Entertainment Weekly)

‘Hoffman and Linney are wonderful -- underplaying so perfectly that crumpled, bittersweet truths continue to surface.’ Time Out

‘Both Linney and Hoffman are so specific in creating these characters that we see them as people, not elements in a plot.’ Chicago Sun Times