Laura Linney on Showing Her Strength in Time Stands Still

Professionally speaking, Laura Linney isn’t one to take the easy route. Rather than trade on her classic blonde beauty, Linney gravitates toward feisty female characters with an edge. Some are iconic (Abigail Adams in HBO’s John Adams, a performance that won her an Emmy and Golden Globe), some are troubled (the unglamorous gals that brought her Oscar nominations for You Can Count on Me and The Savages) and some, like Sarah, the photojournalist she’s playing in Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway production of Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still, are a mass of contradictions. Back in America after suffering serious injuries in a car bomb explosion, Sarah’s got a loving partner (played by Brian d’Arcy James) who wants a family, but she can’t escape the pull of a war zone. In a chat shortly before opening night, Linney is both cordial and reserved, displaying a bit of real-life feistiness when it comes to critics and questions about the not-always-lovable women she chooses to play.

Are you enjoying being back on Broadway in Time Stands Still?
I’m loving it. It’s such a happy group of people. And [MTC's Samuel J. Friedman] is a wonderful theater. I loved doing [Donald Margulies’] Sight Unseen in this house, and I love doing this play.

What do you like about Sarah, this very complex photographer you’re playing?
She is complex. I like that she is very engaged in her life. She’s not a passive person, and I think she battles with what she’s doing with her life on a daily basis.

She’s got this dreamboat guy and very successful career. It’s a fascinating look at the push-pull a strong woman experiences.
It talks about having a vocation, and what that means. When you have a calling toward something, whether it’s the arts or journalism or politics or medicine, what does that do to the rest of your life? Anyone in the theater can certainly relate to that.

How are the audiences responding? Do you feel them siding with you or with Brian d’Arcy James’ character?
I can’t tell about that, but what I can tell is that they’re listening. There’s the sound of active silence, when you can hear a collective group of people listening attentively. It’s a unique sound, and it’s almost impossible to define, but there’s a concentration in the air that you can feel. They're there, and they're with you.

You have a unique relationship with Donald Margulies. [Linney played a young journalist in the 1992 off-Broadway premiere of Sight Unseen, then the lead in a 2004 Broadway production that brought her a Tony nomination.]
I loved doing [the first production of Sight Unseen.] I was fresh out of Juilliard; it was the second or third play I did outside of school, and was my first taste of being in something that absolutely worked, from top to bottom. It was also my first experience of feeling what it was like to be a professional actress.

Why is Margulies’ writing such a good fit for you?
It’s not about me, it’s about how great the writing is. He gives you everything you need, and all the room you need in which to do it.

You’ve done both new plays and classics. Is one more challenging than the other?
There’s sort of a blessing and a curse that comes with both. With classics, everyone is always comparing it to something else. With new plays, they’re always wishing it was something else [laughs]. There’s backlash either way. The thing about plays—whether it’s a classic or one in its infancy— is that they’re meant to be done by a lot of different actors, not just one. Classics are meant to be performed, and new plays are meant to be developed and launched so that hopefully they will have a long life.

What’s been your happiest experience in the theater?
This play ranks up there, and The Crucible, certainly. The first Sight Unseen was magical; the John Shanley play I did at MTC [Beggars in a House of Plenty] was magical. Being an understudy in Six Degrees of Separation? I was euphoric the whole time.

I must ask you about the 1992 Broadway revival of The Seagull in which you played Nina [in a cast that included Tyne Daly as Arkadina, Jon Voight as Trigorin, Ethan Hawke as Treplev, plus Tony Randall, Tony Roberts, Danny Burstein and more.]
That was a notoriously strange experience [laughs]. It will live in the minds of the people who saw it. There’s never a guarantee that [a play] going to work, but it’s always an adventure, good or bad.

I bet you were great as Nina.
Oh no, I wasn’t great in it. The production was very troubled and a real mishmash, but it’s one of those things you look back on and you’ve just got to laugh. But I’ve had a ton of happy experiences.

Was the [2008] Broadway revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses a good experience?
It was in some ways, and it was awkward in others. But I loved the challenge of working on it every day, I really did. I loved the actors.

Do you pay attention to reviews? Do they come into your consciousness?
I try not to, but those [for Les Liaisons] did, unfortunately, and it made it very hard for me. [Reviews] ruin your experience. Good or bad, they do. It’s not a critic’s job to tell me how to feel about my own work, so you need to stay away from them. But it’s almost impossible because people, for some weird reason, always want to tell you how good or how bad your reviews are, neither of which is helpful.

In a Broadway.com Q&A during the run of Hedda Gabler, Mary-Louise Parker mentioned a conversation she had with you about how negative press can make actors wonder why they should give their time to theater.
Mmm-hum! When I’m onstage, I don’t want anything to get in the way of my relationship with the play and the actors I’m working with. I don’t want a second of distraction about what somebody else thinks. I’m not anti-critic or anti-review by any means; critics are very important, but it doesn’t help an actor.

The movie roles you tend to take are so different from the way you look in real life…
Isn’t that what actors are supposed to do?

Most movie stars don’t.
It always makes me giggle when people ask me that question. Because I’m like, “What am I supposed to do?”

You chose not to be the sunny blonde of the movies.
That’s not what I’m interested in doing, and I don’t think people would hire me for that, either. I did the sunny blonde for a while—all the Mary Ann Singleton stuff [in Tales of the City]—and I had a great time. But it’s nice to be able to move through ingenue and then leading lady and dip into character land as well. It’s what I had always hoped to do in my life in the theater. I’m reeeallly lucky and really grateful.

Which of your movies do fans mention most?
There’s a wide range. When someone comes up and says, “Were you in…” I never know what they’re going to say because there are the commercial films, the indie films, the horror films, the television stuff. Sometimes I’m really surprised. Like James Earl Jones, who I was delighted to spend a little time seated next to [at an event], said, “I loved you in The Mothman Prophecies,” a horror film I did. I wouldn’t think that that would come out of his mouth! [Laughs.]

My guess would have been Love Actually.
That’s certainly popular, but it’s not [mentioned most]. I never know what someone is going to say. It’s nice to be known for anything at all.

You’ve had three Oscar nominations and won two Emmys, a Golden Globe and a SAG Award. What’s it really like on the red carpet?
It’s a combination of hilarious and terrifying. It’s a very strange experience, at least for me, but you’re sort of tickled at the same time. It’s a wild, surreal thing to go through. It’s also really, really loud. It’s sort of sensory overload. It can be thrilling, there’s no doubt! You can’t believe that you’re there. You just have to strap on your sense of humor.

You always look gorgeous. Do you choose your own gowns?
Oh no, I have a woman named Jane Ross who helps me. I would have a heart attack if I had to do that on my own.

Tell us about your new Showtime series, The Big C.
It’s about a woman who is diagnosed with cancer and she knows she only has a year to live—and it’s a comedy. We go into production this summer, and it’s a whole new experience for me. I’m hoping they’re going to shoot it on the east coast. We’ll see.

What made you say yes?
It intersected with a lot of things I’ve been thinking about. What do you do with the time you have? How do you spend your life? And I’m sort of attracted to impossible tasks [laughs]. A comedy dealing with someone dying of cancer—it’s risky and implausible, so naturally I’m attracted to it.

Where are you based these days?
I spend time here, in Connecticut and in Colorado.

And you’re a newlywed.
I am! [Linney married Marc Schauer in May; the couple met when he was her host at the 2004 Telluride Film Festival.]

You managed to keep your wedding entirely under the radar.
Yep! It’s fascinating—don’t alert the press, and you get to keep it private [laughs]. If you don’t want people to know things, don’t tell them. It’s pretty simple.

Well, it seems like you’ve gotten a happy ending.
Life is good! Life is very good.

See Laura Linney in Time Stands Still at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.