Lynn Carlin was born as Mary Lynn Reynolds on 31 January 1938,[1] in Los Angeles, the daughter of socialite Muriel Elizabeth (née Ansley) and 'Larry Reynolds' (Laurence Kramer).[2][3] Her father was a Hollywood business manager, and her mother worked in radio. She grew up in Laguna Beach.[4]
Carlin, Robert Altman's[7] secretary-turned-actress,[8][9] earned her only Academy Award nomination in 1968 for her first feature role as John Marley's suicidal wife Maria in John Cassavetes' Faces (1968). She is the first nonprofessional to be nominated for an Academy Award.[10] She subsequently played wives and mothers before retiring in 1987. She next appeared in ...tick...tick...tick... (1970) as George Kennedy's ambitious, henpecking wife and returned to offbeat roles as Buck Henry's wife, searching for her missing daughter amid the hippies and drug culture of 1970s New York in Miloš Forman's Taking Off (1971).[11] The same year, she appeared in Blake Edwards' western Wild Rovers. In 1972, she was re-teamed with John Marley, again as his wife, in Bob Clark's horror film Deathdream, and her other film roles include the British drama film Baxter! (1973) as the mother of Scott Jacoby, the 1979 comedy French Postcards, and the 1982 horror film Superstition.
Carlin is perhaps best remembered as the parent of growing teen Lance Kerwin in the TV-movie James at 15 (1977) and its subsequent spin-off James at 16. In 1977, she was cast in several episodes of The Waltons as a nurse who marries the county sheriff. She appeared in the 1976 miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man Book II, and she had a recurring role on the short-lived television series Strike Force (1981–1982). She appeared in several other TV movies, including Silent Night, Lonely Night. In 1972, she appeared in an episode of Gunsmoke titled "Milligan" as the wife of Harry Morgan's character.
In 1971, she played the mother of teenage father Desi Arnaz Jr. in Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones. The same year, she played Peter Falk's wife in A Step Out of Line. In 1974, she appeared in both Terror on the 40th Floor and The Morning After. She played the wife of Sam Houston in the biopic The Honorable Sam Houston in 1975. The following year, she played Eve Plumb's mother in Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway.
In her last television movie, she played the mother of three young men manipulated into breaking their father (Robert Mitchum) out of jail in A Killer in the Family (1983). Her last acting role was a guest appearance on Murder, She Wrote in 1987 as the wife of the episode's murder victim, played by Cornel Wilde.
Personal life
Carlin was married to Peter Hall from 1958 until their divorce in 1960. Her second marriage was to Edward Carlin, with whom she had two children. This union (1963–74) also ended in divorce. Her oldest child is podcaster/journalist Dan Carlin. She was married to John Wolfe[12] from 1983 until his death in 1999.[13]
^Charity, Tom (26 June 2012). John Cassavetes: Lifeworks. Omnibus Press. p. 99. ISBN978-0-85712-841-6. ... Lynn Carlin, a secretary who worked for another young, frustrated film-maker in the adjacent office at Screen Gems, Robert Altman. Carlin had done a little ...
^Klemesrud, Judy (April 18, 1971). "Movies". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 October 2023. WHAT kind of woman would go on as the very last guest on the David Frost show, where she barely gets to utter a peep, and not let it bother her; would, at the age of 33, take movie roles that make people think she is in her 40's and not let it bother her; would let herself get typecast as a hysterical suburban housewife and not let it bother her; and would play a partially nude scene— even though she has one inverted nip ple—and not let it bother her? (Well, not much, anyway.)
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