By Adam Hetrick
17 Nov 2008

Laura Linney

Stage and screen actress Laura Linney is in early talks to star in a new HBO film about Pulitzer Prize-winning author and publisher Katharine Graham.

Variety reports that "The Year of Magical Thinking" novelist Joan Didion is at work penning the screenplay based on the life of the late publisher who ran The Washington Post during Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal and subsequent resignation. Graham earned a Pulitzer Prize for her 1998 memoir "Personal History."

Linney is reportedly in negotiations to star as Graham under the direction of Robert Benton in the untitled film. Laura Ziskin, Julie Goldstein and Pam Williams will produce.

Tony nominee Laura Linney most recently appeared in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Her stage roles also include Sight Unseen, The Crucible, Uncle Vanya, Honour, Holiday, Hedda Gabler, The Seagull, Six Degrees of Separation, Beggars in the House of Plenty and Fortinbras. Among her extensive screen appearances are "John Adams," "Tales of the City," "You Can Count on Me," "The Squid and the Whale," "Mystic River" and "The Savages."