Biography of Maura Tierney

2009-07-14T01:44:00.000-07:00

Maura Tierney was born on February 3, 1965, in Boston, Massachusetts. Ms. Tierney was raised in Hyde Park by her father, Joe, an eight-term Boston city councilman and mayoral candidate, now a lawyer, and her mother, Pat, currently a real-estate agent. Maura has two younger siblings, including a sister, Dierdre, for whom she acted as matron of honour when she married in 1998. Contrary to popular belief, Maura Tierney is not related to actress Gene Tierney.

Ms. Tierney went on to attend the Circle in the Square theatre school at New York University, but ended up six credits short of graduation. During this time, she met filmmaker Richard Shepard, with whom she would become close friends with and appear in several of his writing/directing works: The Linguini Incident (her big screen debut), Mercy, Oxygen, and the upcoming Mexico City (with a voice cameo). She also reads his scripts long before they are produced. During her years at NYU, she performed in several plays, including Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Baby With the Bathwater, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Talking With, and Food. For a period of time, Maura lived in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, at one point selling t-shirts door-to-door in college dorms. She eventually relocated to Los Angeles, where she landed an agent. However, success was not yet imminent. The Van Dyke Show, her first foray into series television, was cancelled after only two months, and her first leading film role was in Dead Women in Lingerie, a project that is conspicuously absent from her official resume.

After several smaller film roles and failed pilots like Flying Blind, Norman Lear cast Maura in his All in the Family spin-off 704 Hauser as the feisty Jewish girlfriend of a conservative black student. While the show was neither hailed by audiences or critics, it garnered considerable attention and controversy because of its origin. The series was cancelled after 5 episodes, more than a year after the original pilot was shot, but within the next year, Maura Tierney became a last-minute hire for a pilot titled The Station. The pilot would eventually become the critically acclaimed sitcom NewsRadio, and, coupled with a supporting role in Primal Fear, it succeeded in bringing Ms. Tierney to the attention of the industry and the public alike.

Maura married actor Billy Morrissette in 1993, to whom she is now divorced. The couple did not have any children, just a black pug named Rose Kennedy. The two of them were both hired as co-stars in a sitcom starring Ralph Macchio, but found the whole thing so awful that they were too happy to get fired. (Maura claims that she deserved it, he didn't.) They also make cameos in the film The Thin Pink Line, unreleased in North America. Mr. Morrissette's other credits include a regular role on the short-lived FOX network series Danger Theatre and a recurring role on Mad About You. However, he is perhaps most well-known for a "Got Milk?" commercial in which he inadvertently confesses to his fiancee that her diamond engagement ring is a fake. Most recently, he directed Maura in an independent film based on his own script, a Macbeth update titled Scotland P.A.

Nowadays, Maura Tierney continues to maintain a high profile both on TV and on film. She was a regular cast member on NBC's long-running series ER and has played major roles in Liar Liar, Forces of Nature, Welcome to Mooseport, and Semi-Pro, to name but a few.

The Maura Tierney

Biography of Maura Tierney