Surprise of Laura Linney's life

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"It's been the great unexpected surprise of my life," Laura Linney muses. She's not talking about her two Oscar nominations (for "You Can Count on Me" and "Kinsey"). Nor is she talking about her two Emmys (for "Frasier" and "Wild Iris"). No, the talented and famous Laura Linney is talking about being a film and television actress at all.

It's not that she saw herself as a teacher, writer or lawyer. Miss Linney, whose film "Jindabyne" opens in theaters today, always wanted to be an actress. It's just that she thought she'd perform strictly onstage.

"My heart was always in the theater," the 43-year-old actress says by telephone. "My father's a playwright. I grew up in Manhattan. I went to Juilliard." (Her father is Romulus Linney.) She was even afraid of the camera.

So how did she become one of the country's most respected on-screen talents?

"I had a really smart agent," she says of her first (late) manager. He suggested she spend a day here and there doing films, to see what it was like. She got small parts in "Lorenzo's Oil" and "Dave."

"I went on these film sets where I just felt like an alien," she recalls. "He introduced me very slowly to it. Then I did 'Tales of the City,' which was this large miniseries. The first six episodes of that was when I remember very specifically thinking, 'Oh, OK, now I can see this would be a lot of fun.' "

That was in 1993. Miss Linney is now known primarily for her intelligent work in independent films -- her funny and touching turn as single-mother Sammy in "You Can Count on Me" was a major part of that film's success. But she got her big break in a rather different sort of movie. In 1995's "Congo," she co-starred alongside an animatronic gorilla.

"I'm in very good company," she laughs. "Jessica Lange had 'King Kong.' " She adds that everyone seems to have a different opinion on when she really broke out. "Theater people think it's 'Sight Unseen.' Television people think it's 'Tales of the City.' "

She first performed in Donald Margulies' "Sight Unseen" in 1992. She revisited the play 12 years later, when she assumed its starring role and earned a Tony nomination. She had already earned a Tony nod in 2002 for "The Crucible."

"The only conscious decision I really made was to work in as many different mediums as I could," she says. "If a fantastic role in television came up, I wouldn't say no. If a small but fantastic role with a great director in a fantastic movie came up, I wouldn't say no."