Lin Shaye life and biography

Linda "Lin" Shaye (born 1944) is an American film, theatre and television actress.

An attractive blonde who is much younger-looking than the wackos she plays, Lin Shaye made her feature debut in Jack Nicholson's "Goin' South" (1978) soon after arriving in Los Angles. A favorite of Walter Hill, having worked in four of his films (as of 1999), she also acted in eight pictures produced by her older brother Robert Shaye before the Farrelly brothers rescued her from anonymity, giving her the first of her memorably unpleasant characters, an irate, upper-class dog owner in "Dumb and Dumber" (1994). As she told Stephen Schaefer in the BOSTON HERALD (August 11, 1999), "I come out to the set and Pete [Farrelly] says--and remember, this is their first movie too--'She screams when they open the door.' I said, 'What if instead of screaming, I had them do my hair like a poodle? And since people are like their dogs, if she goes'--and I did a little poodle cry."

The Farrellys, recognizing her as a kindred spirit, have cast her in every one of their pictures (to date), but Shaye was at her scene-stealing best in "There's Something About Mary" (1998) as Magda, the grotesquely sun-burned Miami matron (whose dog Matt Dillon accidentally electrocutes). When the pooch started licking her face in one scene, she seized the moment and began enthusiastically French-kissing the terrier, prompting Cameron Diaz to tell PEOPLE (September 14, 1998), "It was one of the funniest and most disgusting and disturbing things I've seen." She entered a different kind of dementia as the God-fearing, KISS-hating mom in Adam Rifkin's "Detroit Rock City" (1999) and returned to the low-brow land of Farrelly in "Me, Myself and Irene" (2000). With her profile higher than ever, Shaye has made known her desire for some normal roles while also hoping that the Farrellys never do a movie without her.

Films:

1975 Hester Street
1978 Goin' South
1980 The Long Riders
1982 Alone in the Dark ; Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again
1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street
1985 Brewster's Millions
1986 Critters
1987 Extreme Prejudice ; Slam Dance ; The Hidden ; The Running Man
1988 Critters 2: The Main Course
1990 Book of Love ; Pump Up the Volume
1992 Roadside Prophets
1993 Loaded Weapon 1 ; The Temp ; Three of Hearts ; Amityville: A New Generation ; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
1994 Corrina, Corrina ; Wes Craven's New Nightmare ; Dumb & Dumber ;
1995 The Nature of the Beast
1996 Kingpin ; Last Man Standing
1998 Living Out Loud ; There's Something About Mary
1999 Detroit Rock City
2001 Say It Isn't So
2002 Wish You Were Dead ; Boat Trip
2003 Who's Your Daddy? ; National Lampoon's Barely Legal ; Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd ; Dead End ; Stuck on You
2004 The Hillside Strangler ; A Cinderella Story ; Cellular ;
2005 Hate Crime ; Confessions of an Action Star ; 2001 Maniacs ; Drop Dead Sexy
2006 Unbeatable Harold ; Bachelor Party Vegas ; Hood of Horror ; Snakes on a Plane ; Driftwood ; Pledge This!
2007 Homo Erectus ; Kush ; Killer Pad
2008 Asylum
2009 My Sister's Keeper ; American Cowslip
2010 Small Town Saturday Night ; 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams
2011 Insidious

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