Maura Tierney's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) ER Nurse Abby … Parenthood Sarah Brave… NewsRadio Lisa Miller The Whole Truth Kathryn Pea… The Van Dyke Show Jillian Ryan 704 Hauser Cherlyn Mar…

Main Movie Roles 2008 - Baby Mama 2008 - Semi-Pro 2008 - Finding Amanda 2007 - The Go-Getter 2006 - Diggers 2004 - Welcome to Mooseport 2003 - Melvin Goes to Dinner 2002 - Insomnia 2001 - Scotland, Pa. 1999 - Forces of Nature 1999 - Oxygen 1999 - Instinct 1998 - Primary Colors 1997 - Liar Liar 1996 - Primal Fear 1993 - The Temp 1992 - White Sands 1991 - The Linguini Incident

BIOGRAPHY:

On the viewing horizon since the late 1980s, actress Maura Tierney has been a steady product of independent features, some hits and some misses, for close to a decade and a half. An odd and compelling beauty, she came from an upperscale Bostonian family and was raised in the Hyde Park district. Born February 3, 1965, the eldest child of three to a prosperous politician and city councilman father and real estate agent mother, Maura initially studied at New York University but left school prior to graduation when she hooked up with the Circle-in-the-Square theater school. Following some stage plays including "Baby with the Bathwater" and "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea," she moved to the West Coast in the late 1980s finding minor roles here and there in TV-movies and making the rounds on episodic shows such as "Growing Pains" (1985), "Family Ties" (1982) and "Law & Order" (1990). She met actor/husband Billy Morrissette after both were fired from the set of an eventually-scrapped Ralph Macchio series. After a few other failed pilots and a short-lived TV series, Maura made a minor film debut with The Linguini Incident (1991) and progressed to leading lady status in the B-movie spoof Dead Women in Lingerie (1991), which didn't go over well. She finally hit paydirt on TV when she won a female co-lead as smart but insecure newswriter Lisa Miller on the comedy series "NewsRadio" (1995). The show was mediocre at best but sailed along for a number of seasons due to the fine comedy instincts of Dave Foley (I), Andy Dick (I) and the late "Saturday Night Live" (1975) player Phil Hartman (I). The show lost its oomph, however, as well as its audience after Hartman's tragic 1998 shotgun slaying, despite an assured replacement in fellow "Saturday Night Live" (1975) alumni Jon Lovitz. The show couldn't escape its bad aura, and it was gone the following year.

Maura's work on the TV sitcom thrust her into the film comedy limelight with prominent roles in such films as the Jim Carrey vehicle Liar Liar (1997). She also showed up as sly, darker-edged femmes in the thriller Primal Fear (1996), Primary Colors (1998) and Instinct (1999). She received one of her best art-house roles as a heavy in her husband's feature Scotland, Pa. (2001)--he wrote and directed. It was back to steady TV work, however, into the millennium with the role of Abby, who was first a nurse and then a doctor, in the long-established and critically-acclaimed medical drama series "ER" (1994), where she still resides on the staff. The L.A.-based actress and her husband enjoy traveling in their spare time.


TRIVIA:

• Undergoing surgery to remove a tumor from her breast [July 13, 2009].
• Owns a black pug, with her husband 'Billy Morrissette' (qv), named Rose- Kennedy. They take her everywhere with them.
• Landed a key part of a single mom who falls for hockey player 'Bruce Willis' (qv) in a romantic comedy titled "The Broadway Brawler." After just two weeks' shooting, however, "creative differences" brought an end to the project.
• Daughter of former Boston City Council president Joseph Tierney.
• Of Irish extraction.
• Was cast in the role of Nurse Abigail 'Abby' Lockhart in _"ER" (1994)_ (qv), without an audition.
• Met her husband, 'Billy Morrissette' (qv), in the revolving lounge at the top of the Hollywood Holiday Inn. It was a blind date of sorts set up by their mutual friends.
• Played an alcoholic in _Oxygen (1999)_ (qv) and on _"ER" (1994)_ (qv).