Biography

Days of Heaven (1978) director Terrence Malick said of Manz: "Linda, the teenage girl, is the heart of the film. She was a sort of street child we had discovered in a laundromat. For the role, she should have been younger, but as soon as I spoke to her, I found in her the maturity of a forty-year old woman. Non-judgmental and left to her own imagination, she had her own ideas [for the role] giving the impression of having actually lived this life instead of having to invent and play within another. At first, it was a bit frustrating to work with her. She couldn't remember her lines, couldn't be interrupted, and was difficult to photograph. Despite this, I started to love her and I believed in her more than anything else. She transformed the role. I am glad that she's the narrator. Her personality shines through the film's objectivity. Every time I gave her new lines, she interpreted it in her own way; when she refers to heaven and hell, she says that everyone is bursting into flames. It was her response to the film on the day when she saw the rushes. That comment was included in the final version. Linda said so many things that I despaired being unable to keep them... I feel like I have not been able to grasp a fraction of who she really is.".

Never knew her father. Her mother worked as a cleaning woman in the Twin Towers in New York City.

Has three sons, Michael, William, and Christopher who died 2016. and three grandchildren.

Linda Manz passed away from pneumonia and lung cancer less than a week before her 59th birthday. Upon her death, she was cremated and her ashes returned to her husband.

She was a lifelong Democrat.