60 Seconds With . . . Laura Linney

The Emmy-winning actress has demonstrated her astounding versatility in such films as “You Can Count on Me” and “Kinsey,” for which she received Oscar nominations, as well as “Mystic River” and “The Squid and the Whale.” So it’s little wonder AFI Fest is paying homage to the 43- year-old Linney at the ArcLight Hollywood on Nov. 9. The event includes a screening of her latest film, “Savages,” in which she and Philip Seymour Hoffman play the adult siblings of a father (Philip Bosco) with dementia.

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CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING HONORED BY THE AFI FESTIVAL.

I’m a little stunned! It hasn’t quite sunk in. It lands on my mother’s birthday, which is nice. It’s always nice to share something like that with a parent.

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YOU CONSTANTLY MIX THINGS UP IN YOUR CAREER -- YOU DO SMALL FILMS, COMMERCIAL FILMS, TV MOVIES AND MINISERIES.

Thankfully, I’ve managed [not to be typecast] just out of sheer endurance. Honestly. When you are younger, you are typecast immediately, no matter where you fall in the scale of talent or what anybody might think of you. People will typecast you as just shorthand. I have outgrown being typecast.

It’s fun for me that there are groups of people who know me from different things. There is the “Tales of the City” crowd who associate me as a young, Midwestern, open sort of girl. Then there is the crowd who thinks of me as a little cold and harsh. And there’s the crowd who thinks of me as intelligent but wounded. I try to keep everybody a little off balance.

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WHAT’S UP NEXT?

I did “City of Your Destination,” which is a Merchant Ivory film with Anthony Hopkins. I just did an eight-hour miniseries for HBO, “John Adams,” and I play Abigail. That was a big one. We shot it in Virginia and Budapest.

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BESIDES CHANGING UP ROLES, YOU KEEP AUDIENCES GUESSING WITH YOUR HAIR. IN “THE NANNY DIARIES,” YOU WERE BLOND; IN “SAVAGES,” A CURLY BRUNET.

To be honest, that has very little to do with me. But my hair has been a great topic of conversation for many a producer and director over the years. It’s eaten up enormous amounts of time. For example it was very important to [“Savages” director] Tamara Jenkins that it was dark and not neat. I had to do “Nanny Diaries” the day after I finished ‘Savages.’ ” You can go blond to dark, but it’s very hard to go dark to blond quickly. I’m amazed there’s a single strand left in my head!

-- Susan.K[email protected]