Rise to Fame
Growing up with playwright Romulus Linney as a father meant theater wasn't ambition, it was just Tuesday. She trained at Juilliard, did Broadway, and spent the nineties taking supporting roles in films like Primal Fear and The Truman Show before Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me (2000) finally gave her something to work with. The low-budget family drama earned her first Oscar nomination and wins from the New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics. The industry caught up slowly.
In the Spotlight
Four Emmy wins and three Oscar nominations ought to make her a household name, but she keeps landing in conversations about who deserved to win, not who did. Ozark drew the best notices of her career as Wendy Byrde, yet she didn't win a single Emmy for any of its four seasons. Staying busy: she directed episodes of Netflix's Black Rabbit in 2025 and signed on for the comedy American Classic opposite Kevin Kline. The pattern is someone who'd rather keep working than keep scoring.
Side Notes
The five Tony nominations with zero wins is the career detail nobody talks about enough. Theater runs in her blood: her Juilliard classmates included Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tim Blake Nelson, and she's done 14 Broadway productions. But the Tony keeps finding someone else. Before any of that, she taught deaf and autistic children. The resume of someone who wasn't quite sure acting was going to work out.