Linda Manz

Linda Manz (August 20, 1961 – August 14, 2020) was an American actress, mainly active from 1978 to 1997. She was best known for her roles in Days of Heaven (1978), Out of the Blue (1980), and Gummo (1997).

In 1976, at the age of 15, she was cast by Terrence Malick to play the young narrator in his second film Days of Heaven, which was released in 1978. Manz's part was initially smaller, but Malick was so impressed by her that he invited her to provide the narration of the film, which appeared in the final cut. She received excellent reviews.

Manz then appeared in the 1979 film The Wanderers, directed by Philip Kaufman, and played the lead in Dennis Hopper's influential cult film Out of the Blue. She appeared in a small role as a robber in "The Snow Queen", an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre.

Her only remaining roles were a spot in the 1979 television movie Orphan Train as Sarah, one of many orphans relocated from eastern orphanages to farms in the West and Midwest in the late 1800s/early 1900s, and a handful of roles in the late 1990s, including a small role in David Fincher's movie The Game and a larger part in Harmony Korine's Gummo in 1997, playing the mother of one of the main characters.

Manz attended P.S. 190 in Manhattan.

In 1985, Manz married camera operator Bobby Guthrie. The couple had three children.

Linda Manz died on August 14, 2020, six days shy of her 59th birthday, of pneumonia and lung cancer.

Cinema

• Days of Heaven (1978) — Linda
• King of the Gypsies (1978; uncredited)
• The Wanderers (1979) — Peewee
• Boardwalk (1979) — Girl Satan
• Out of the Blue (1980) — Cebe
• Longshot (1981) — Maxine Gripp
• Mir reicht's - ich steig aus (1983)
• Gummo (1997) — Solomon's Mother
• The Game (1997) — Amy
• Along for the Ride (2016) — Self, documentary

Television

• Dorothy (1979) — Frankie (4 episodes; "The Bookworm Turns", "Hard Hearted Hamlet", "Lies and Whisper", "Give My Regrets to Broadway")
• Orphan Train (1979) — Sarah
• Faerie Tale Theatre (1985) — Robber Girl ("The Snow Queen")
• This Beat Goes On: Canadian Pop Music in the 1970s (2009) — Self, documentary