Linda Geiser

Linda Geiser is a Swiss-born actress, film and television performer, and arts patron born on May 13, 1935, in Köniz, Switzerland. She was the second of three children born to Samuel "Sami" Geiser (1907–1993) and Gertrud "Trudy" Geiser (née Joss), and grew up in Spiegel, a district of Köniz, where she attended local schools alongside classmates that included Elisabeth Kopp. She has an older sister, Annemarie Bachofner (née Geiser), and a younger brother, Hans Beat Geiser. Geiser trained in acting at the University of the Arts Bern and studied English in Bern before making her first trip to the United States in 1959, when she visited relatives in Ohio and New York.

In 1961, at the age of 26, Geiser relocated permanently to New York City, where she continued her acting training at HB Studio while pursuing roles in theatre and on Broadway. Her Broadway career spanned 1965 to 1966 and included appearances in Ivanov and The Devils. During this same period, she appeared in Sidney Lumet's 1964 film The Pawnbroker in a scene in which she fully exposed her breasts, a moment that contravened the Motion Picture Production Code and stands as one of the earliest instances of a nude scene in a mainstream American film. Geiser also became known in Switzerland for her work in Swiss television and theatre, including the series Lüthi und Blanc in the 2000s.

Beyond her performing career, Geiser established herself as a significant patron of the arts in New York. She was among the founders of the Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York, an organization dedicated to promoting Swiss artists. She also oversees the Bern stipend program, which brings artists to New York annually for training under her guidance. In 1979, she purchased a deteriorating red brick building in the East Village of Manhattan for $38,000, financing the acquisition in part by mortgaging her family's property outside of Bern after the building's custodian made the sale conditional on her purchasing it directly from him. For more than four decades, she rented space in that building at affordable rates to artists, musicians, and other creative individuals working in New York. She sold the property in 2024 and subsequently returned to Switzerland, where she lives in a retirement home.

Geiser has been in a relationship with John Durgin, born in 1958, whom she met in the early 1980s. Durgin worked as a barista and handyman. Geiser does not have children.