LINDA MANZ

(20 August 1961 - 14 August 2020)

The American actress Linda Manz, who has died from pneumonia and lung cancer at the age of 58, had a relatively short career in films and television. Born in New York City, she had no intention of being an actress until her mother suggested it. Her schoolteacher recommended the fifteen-year-old Linda to Terrence Malick when he was casting for his film Days of Heaven about life in the Texas Panhandle in 1916. It was a small part but the director was so impressed by Manz he wrote the film’s narration for her, and her performance arguably outshone the film’s stars Richard Gere and Brooke Adams. Days of Heaven won four production Oscars. Then Manz had an uncredited role in Frank Pierson’s King of the Gypsies, played Peewee in Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers, appeared with Lee Strasberg and Ruth Gordon in Boardwalk, and was the star of Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue, about a young girl with a dysfunctional family. Longshot was a football drama from E.W. Swackhamer, after which she did some television and a film in Germany. She retired in 1985 to stay home with her husband, cinematographer Robert L. Guthrie, and their three sons, Michael, William and Christopher (who died in 2018). She returned to the screen briefly in 1997 for Harmony Korine’s Gummo with Nick Sutton and Chloë Sevigny and David Fincher’s The Game with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. Linda Manz had a brief and impressive career but a life sadly cut short by illness.

MICHAEL DARVELL