LAURA LINNEY DOESN'T KNOW HER OWN STRENGTHS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Laura Linney exhibits most of the qualities you'd expect a born-and- bred, serious actor to possess.

Except, refreshingly, the ego.

Long admired in hometown New York theater circles, fervidly adored by fans of the sporadic ``Tales of the City'' TV installments and increasingly respected by moviegoers as projects have improved from ``Congo'' to her complicated portrayal of Jim Carrey's deceptive wife in ``The Truman Show,'' Linney is now garnering universal praise and growing Oscar buzz for her work in the low-budget family drama ``You Can Count on Me.''

But trying to get the 36-year-old actress to exult in her current success is a fool's errand. She'll hesitate to expound on her accomplishment and shift the credit to others. If she ends up making an acceptance speech next March, it may well set a record for the fewest ``I's'' and most ``thank yous.''

``Oh, God, my contributions? Eeek,'' Linney says in a call from the Toronto location of her latest film. ``You just do all the work that you're supposed to do. You get a really good piece of material - and, sometimes, even when you don't - you just start to spin your imagination.

``But most of the credit really goes to Kenny (Lonergan, the playwright and ``Analyze This'' scriptwriter who wrote and makes his directing debut with ``Count''). What happens is that a lot of writers out there are result-oriented; they're writing something to sell, and their scripts tend to get a little thin because they're trying to please so many different people. But when someone is writing purely for the love of it and just trying to create a really good piece - and that completed piece is protected from meddling hands - you have material that you're really able to play. The characters have many levels and there's just more to do.''

Yes. But it takes a special kind of actress to do it.

``Actresses don't get a lot of chances to play meaty roles,'' notes Lonergan. ``And when they do, sometimes they just fall apart. You see that they're very good and they're skillful and they're able, but they don't have the depth. In this part, however, Laura doesn't miss a trick.

``A lot of film actors are good at casual, moment-to-moment reality, which photographs well but, I don't personally think, has a lot of depth,'' Lonergan continues. ``Then, there are other people that do a lot of work, but just aren't present, flexible, and open and available to the other people in the scene with them. The fact that Laura's both is the mark, I think, of a first-rate actor.''

So what is this wonderful role? A deceptively mundane one on the surface. But it's what lies beneath that counts.

Linney plays Sammy Prescott, a single mother in a small Catskill Mountains town who seems to have her life in generally good order. She dotes on her smart, 8-year-old son Rudy (Rory Culkin), holds a good job at the local bank and attends church regularly.

But when her drifter brother Terry (stage actor Mark Ruffalo) blows back into town, Sammy's world is ever-so-significantly rocked. With a free baby sitter for a change, she starts seeking satisfaction in new and occasionally alarming ways. Irresponsible Terry gets her mad, then gets her high. She embarks on a torrid and ridiculous affair with her new, very married boss (Matthew Broderick). Basically, without really changing all that much, Sammy comes to question every assumption she had about her life.

Pressed for information, Linney describes the thinking that went into the subtly all-encompassing performance.

``We all did a lot of work as far as making these people as real and as close to us as we could,'' she says. ``She and her brother were frozen in time (the opening scene shows them, as children, receiving the news that their parents have been killed), and she remained isolated in this small town. While she grew up chronologically as the years went by, she's really still struggling to grow up. And when Terry comes back into Sammy's life, the discipline thatshe's so vigorously worked at is disrupted.

``Then unplanned things start to happen. I think she surprises herself, starts to act out needs that are suddenly happening and feelings that are coming to the surface. Stuff is unleashed. She wasn't living in any kind of delusion, I'd say. It's just that all of the people in this movie have great faults, they make mistakes and are, really, just doing the best that they can. And sometimes, when you try to do that too hard, you can paint yourself into a corner.''

Linney knows the risks of that and is still doing her best to fight them herself.

The daughter of playwright Romulus Linney, she was all but born with her feet on the boards. Acting was an interest from early childhood and later nurtured at all the right places: the Juilliard School, Brown University and even the Moscow Arts Theatre School. Acclaimed Broadway performances have been registered in ``The Seagull,'' ``Six Degrees of Separation,'' ``Hedda Gabler'' and a recent ``Uncle Vanya'' opposite Derek Jacobi.

``As much as I would like to say it has nothing to do with my father and it's all strictly from me, of course he had an influence on my career choice,'' she says. ``But my love for the theater, and for film and television, is purely my own.''

The latter has been getting quite a workout recently. Besides ``Count,'' she'll be seen by year's end opposite Gillian Anderson in a buzzed-about big-screen adaptation of Edith Wharton's ``The House of Mirth.'' ``Further Tales of the City,'' the third installment of Armistead Maupin's San Francisco lifestyle series, has been shot. The current job in Canada, a feature called ``Black Iris,'' co-stars the legendary Gena Rowlands.

And the work never stops.

``I fell in love with it very early, but I'm not fully consumed by acting,'' Linney says, not entirely convincingly. ``It takes up a very large part of my life, there's no doubt about that, and I definitely make sacrifices in order to work. But I hope that all roads in my life don't lead to Rome, basically. I have a group of very close friends, I try to read a lot - constantly keep learning. I guess I'm a perpetual student in that way.''

These days, though, that studying is focused on, what else, film acting.

``Hopefully, I get a little better every time,'' she says. ``What draws me to film is that I find it so fascinating and difficult that you sort of feel compelled to become better at it.''

Even when the critics are saying you're as good as you can get.

``It really becomes a very personal thing for me,'' Linney reveals. ``I have a sense that 'You Can Count on Me' is being well-received and I'm really happy about that. But at the end of the day, for me, it's really about how I feel about it. How do I feel I did in it and felt through the whole experience?

``I'm really proud of this one, and there are few projects I've felt that way about. What that will do for me is that, when things are difficult - which they will be at some point, as they have been in the past - you have a few secret gems in your pocket, and this movie is one of them.

``It just gives you a little bit of confidence, knowing that you've been involved in something that's actually good.''

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Photo:

Actress Laura Linney is busy at work playing a dazed and confused mom in ``You Can Count on Me'' and an adulterous wife, opposite Gillian Anderson, in the period piece ``The House of Mirth.''

Jim Cooper/Associated Press