| Lynn Carlin | |
|---|---|
| Born | Mary Lynn Reynolds January 31, 1938 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Spouse | Peter Hall (1958-1960; divorced) Edward Carlin (1963-1974; divorced); 2 children John Wolfe (1983-present) |
Lynn Carlin (born Mary Lynn Reynolds; January 31, 1938, Los Angeles, California) is an American actress. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in the movie Faces. Her father, Larry Reynolds, was a Hollywood business manager in the 1930s. Carlin made her stage debut in Clare Booth Luce's The Women at the Laguna Beach Playhouse.
Carlin, a secretary turned actress, 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 subsequently played wives and mothers before retiring in 1987. She next appeared ...tick...tick...tick... (1970), as George Kennedy's ambitious, henpecking wife, and returned to the offbeat as Buck Henry's wife, searching for her missing daughter amid the hippies and drug culture of 1970s New York in Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971).
The small screen saw Carlin cast for her maternal presence as well. She 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 had a recurring role on the short-lived television series, Strike Force (1981–82).
Carlin appeared in several other TV movies, providing a strong supporting turn in Silent Night, Lonely Night, starring Shirley Jones and Lloyd Bridges. In 1971, she played the mother of teenage father Desi Arnaz Jr. in Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones. That same year she also portrayed 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 made for 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.
She was first married to Peter Hall in 1958 (divorced 1960), and then to Edward Carlin, with whom she had two children, from 1963 to 1974, when the marriage ended in divorce. Her elder child is the podcaster/journalist Dan Carlin. She married John Wolfe in 1983.