Linda Manz

Linda Manz was an American actress who began her career as a teenager and became known for playing streetwise, troubled young women. Raised in New York City, she was encouraged by her mother to train at a performing arts academy, where a teacher pointed her toward a casting director seeking young performers. That led to her selection by Terrence Malick for Days of Heaven (1978), in which she played an orphan and improvised narration; critics including Roger Ebert praised her work. She went on to The Wanderers (1979), a teenage-gang drama, and took the lead as an Elvis-obsessed teenager in Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue (1981), a role that brought her critical acclaim. Her television work included the series Dorothy, the movie Orphan Train and the film Longshot. After leaving acting in the mid-1980s, she returned in 1997 for Harmony Korine's Gummo and David Fincher's The Game. She died in 2020, and her films later drew renewed critical attention.