From 'Ozark' to Old Saybrook: Laura Linney receives award at the Kate
Sep. 8—OLD SAYBROOK — When actress Laura Linney was honored with the Spirit of Katharine Hepburn Award on Saturday, she looked at the sculpture that is the award — it's the image of the legendary actress Hepburn sitting cross-legged on the ground — and said:
"I'm so excited to be living with one of these because that face will be staring at me and reminding me to, you know, be brave, strengthen my spine, to jump in."
Linney hardly seems in need of that. The actress has established a career with choices that certainly seem brave — and wide-ranging as well.
She starred as the increasingly dark Wendy Byrde in the Netflix series "Ozark," earning four Emmy nominations in the process. She also dove into the world of directing during "Ozark's" run, albeit only because of co-star Jason Bateman's insistence; more on that later.
She took on the one-woman play "My Name Is Lucy Barton," adapted from the book of the same name, and nabbed her fifth Tony nomination for that 2020 turn.
She won an Emmy for playing Abigail Adams in the HBO miniseries "John Adams."
Linney is the ninth person to win the Spirit of Katharine Hepburn Award. It is given each year by the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (affectionately known as the Kate) to someone who embodies the independent spirit and character of Hepburn, who had a home in Old Saybrook.
During Saturday's event inside the Kate, Linney stood beneath a screen where her face was projected next to Hepburn's and said, "If anyone had ever told me that my name and my picture would be next to Katharine Hepburn's, I would never have believed it."
Broadcast journalist Cynthia McFadden interviewed Linney onstage as part of Saturday's gala. McFadden asked Linney what Hepburn represented to her.
"It's not just to me; it's to everybody. She's the one who broke barriers. She's the one, though her own behavior, who said: come on in, the water is fine, be brave, enjoy this, life is a privilege, jump in, don't squander your time," Linney said. "She was so beautiful, so incredibly beautiful, and she didn't lead with that. Which made her more beautiful, I think."
Taking on a Hepburn role
Linney has a role in common with Hepburn: Linney played Linda Seton in "Holiday" on stage in 1995. It's the same part that Hepburn made famous in the 1938 film.
When McFadden asked Linney how she felt about that, she replied, "I loved it. I loved it because I believe that great parts are meant to be played. I believe that there is usually one person who brings it enormous life, and then it is passed down. And you honor the person who created it and you honor the play. Plays are living things. ... That helped me in that I wasn't overly intimated by doing it."
Directing 'Ozark'
Of all of Linney's work, "Ozark," which ran from 2017 to 2022, might be among her best known.
She spoke about directing in the show's fourth and final season.
"I had no desire to direct at all. It's all Jason Bateman's fault," she said.
Bateman, who also directed episodes of "Ozark," told her during the first season that she needed to direct. Her response: no thanks. She didn't want to potentially mess up the directing job. She was worried about jeopardizing her relationships with Bateman and everyone else on the series, because she loved doing that show so much.
Bateman kept asking her each year. In the final season, he called Linney's manager, who then told Linney if she didn't direct on "Ozark," she would drop her as a client. The manager explained that Linney would never have a chance like this again, where she could try directing with people who already loved her and supported her. So Linney did it. She said she ended up liking directing, although she still doesn't necessarily love it. She is currently directing episodes of a new Netflix series called "Black Rabbit" that stars Jude Law and her old friend Bateman.
"Again, this is Jason's fault. He called and said, 'You have to do this,'" Linney said.
'Love Actually' and Clint Eastwood
Another of Linney's most popular projects: the 2003 romantic comedy "Love Actually." When McFadden asked if "Love Actually" was fun to do, Linney responded, "Oh, God, yes." She didn't know that the film would resonate the way it did. But she was happy to be in a Christmas movie, since she's a "Christmas fanatic," and she was thrilled to be in a project surrounded by so many "delicious Brits."
She said, "The thing about that movie, and a lot of people try to replicate the formula of that movie and none of them work. (She laughed.) The reason it doesn't work is because it's not Richard Curtis who's doing it. Richard Curtis (who wrote and directed 'Love Actually') is an unbelievably decent man, on a deep level."
She noted that he co-created the charity Comic Relief.
"That ('Love Actually') script, while some people find it saccharine and all that stuff — I get it — it really does reverberate with many, many people, and that's because of him. That's his warmth coming through," she said.
Linney was making Clint Eastwood's drama "Mystic River" at the same time as "Love Actually" and would fly back and forth between London and Boston.
"Mystic River" was the second of three movies Linney has made with Eastwood directing. She said they got on incredibly well, and he taught her a lot. He usually only does one take of a scene, and she imitated his relaxed, quiet way of speaking to the actors and crew. After shooting a scene, he might turn to the camera operator and say, in a gentle manner, "Were we in focus? OK. OK. I'm good. Let's move on."
Linney realized that, with Eastwood's pace of filming, she had to calibrate herself so she was always ready to shoot.
A funny side note: She said that Eastwood is quite tall, and when he was heading to the set, the folks on the walkie-talkies would alert each other by saying, "Tall man walking."
Parental support
Linney, 60, talked a bit about her parents, who divorced when she was an infant but who were both very influential in her life. Her father was esteemed playwright Romulus Linney. Her mother was a nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Linney said that she did the Showtime series "The Big C" — in which her character faced a cancer diagnosis — because of the relationships she had growing up around cancer.
Supporting the arts
Linney thanked the people who attended the ceremony at the Kate for supporting the arts.
"It is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the most important and valuable things that you can be doing with your time and your money. ... Theaters like these that serve community, that create community are unbelievably important. The fact that you have one right in your backyard that is thriving and doing well and creating and gathering people together is something to be very, very proud of."
She also asked everyone to do one thing over the next year: Take a child or young adult to the theater.
"You will be changing their lives in ways you will never fully understand. Someone did that for me, and I hope you will all do that for someone else," Linney said.