Linda Emond

Linda Marie Emond, born May 22, 1959, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is an American actress working across stage, film, and television. She grew up in Orange County, California, attending Loara Elementary School, Ball Junior High, and Loara High School, where she served as homecoming queen. Her first stage appearance came in high school, playing Jean Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She earned a BA in Theatre Arts from California State University, Fullerton in 1982, followed by an MFA from the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her first professional stage performance, which earned her an Equity card, was in On the Verge at The Empty Space Theatre in Seattle during her final semester of graduate school.

Before establishing herself in New York, Emond built a substantial stage career in Chicago, accumulating five Joseph Jefferson Award nominations and winning the award twice — for her portrayals of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion and Paulina in The Winter's Tale. She also performed at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in David Hare's The Secret Rapture in 1990. Her New York stage debut came in 1996 in the Off-Broadway production of Nine Armenians at Manhattan Theatre Club, a performance that earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination.

Emond's association with playwright Tony Kushner has been a recurring thread throughout her career. She appeared in three separate productions of his Homebody/Kabul — first at New York Theatre Workshop in 2001, then at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and again at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2004. The 2001 New York production brought her a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Actress, and the 2002 Obie Award for Performance. In 2011, she appeared off-Broadway in Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures as "Empty," a role written specifically for her. Additional off-Broadway and regional credits include Craig Lucas's The Dying Gaul at the Vineyard Theater in 1998, where she played Elaine, and the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of The Winter's Tale in July 2010, in which she played Queen Hermione. She also appeared at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in The Cherry Orchard in 2004 and in A.R. Gurney's Far East in 1998.

On Broadway, Emond's career spans from 1997 to 2026. She made her Broadway debut in the 1997 revival of 1776, playing Abigail Adams. In 2003, she appeared in Yasmina Reza's Life x 3, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play as well as the Outer Critics Circle Award. Her Broadway credits also include the plays Becky Sharp and Cabaret. In the 2012 revival of Death of a Salesman, she starred as Linda Loman opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play. Her performance as Fraulein Schneider in the 2014 revival of Cabaret brought her a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical, giving her three Tony nominations in total across her Broadway career.

Emond's screen work includes the role of Simone Beck in the 2009 film Julie & Julia and the title role in the 2009 Lifetime television film Georgia O'Keeffe. She portrayed Abigail Adams in the PBS documentary American Experience: John and Abigail Adams and played Mary Ann McCray in the 2009 Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation A Dog Named Christmas. She co-starred in the 2016 film Indignation, an adaptation of Philip Roth's novel, as Esther Messner, the mother of Logan Lerman's lead character. On television, she held a recurring role as Connie Clark in the AMC comedy-drama Lodge 49 and guest starred as Clara Barton in HBO's The Gilded Age in 2022. Her recurring television appearances also include The Good Wife, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Gossip Girl, Wonderland, Elementary, and The Knick. As a voiceover artist, she narrated more than 50 episodes of the Lifetime series Intimate Portrait. Her audiobook work has earned her four AudioFile Earphones Awards, and she has been named one of AudioFile's Best Voices of the Year.