Louise Linton

Linton was born in the Murrayfield area of Edinburgh, Scotland, the youngest of three children born to William and Rachel Hay. She was educated at St George's School for Girls and Fettes College. Her family owns Melville Castle outside Edinburgh, where she used to spend weekends.

As a child, Linton trained with a private coach from The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, from which she acquired her certificate with honours. Her mother died of breast cancer when she was 14 years old. After boarding school, she turned down a modeling contract and spent part of her gap year serving as a volunteer in northern Zambia, before attending university in the United States. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Pepperdine University and earned a law degree (J.D.) from the University of West Los Angeles School of Law.

Linton has stated she adopted her stage surname from her paternal grandfather, partly to protect her family and partly to avoid confusion with the author Louise Hay. Linton acted in her first film in 2007's Lions for Lambs, where she played the character Miss M, but her scenes were dropped from the final release. In 2008, she portrayed the role of Katie in the Roy Lee horror film The Echo.

She acted in episodes of the TV series CSI: NY and Cold Case and in the film Crew 2 Crew. Linton's first lead role was in the sci-fi film Scavengers. She appeared in Cabin Fever, and played the lead role of Elizabeth in the thriller Intruder in 2016.

Linton posed for Maxim in 2009.

She is a producing partner of Stormchaser Films, a Los Angeles-based independent production company which she founded in 2012, named for her brother's dinghy.

From 2009 to 2011, in various interviews Linton described her volunteer role in what she described as "war-torn Zambia" and the night she spent "hiding in the bush as Hutu rebels attacked the village she was working in." In 2016, Linton drew wide criticism for her self-published book about her experiences in Zambia, titled In Congo's Shadow, co-authored by Wendy Holden. After many readers objected to her false portrayal of Zambia, Linton withdrew her book from sale. The Zambian High Commission in London and others have criticised the book for its inaccuracies and promotion of the false narrative of "the white saviour". She later apologised for causing offense and promised to donate all profits from the book to an appropriate charity.

On 24 June 2017, Linton married Steven Mnuchin, the United States Secretary of the Treasury and ex-Goldman Sachs banker. The civil ceremony, at which Vice President Mike Pence officiated, took place at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. They met through mutual friends. Previously, Linton was married to Los Angeles defense attorney Ronald Richards from 2005 to 2010.

Linton serves on the Board of Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA and the Old Fettesian’s US Board of Trustees for Fettes College in Edinburgh. She was an Ambassador for Erskine Wounded Warriors Scotland (2010–2012). She is Ambassador for the Scottish Butterfly Trust for Cystic Fibrosis.

In August 2017, Linton was criticised on Instagram for posting a photo of herself accompanying her husband on a trip to Fort Knox, Kentucky, on a United States government plane, using hashtags to highlight the designer clothing and accessories she wore. In her reply, she called the critic "adorably out of touch", and suggested that she contributed more to the US economy and paid more in taxes than the woman criticising her. Following extensive publicity, Linton apologised for both her initial post and response to criticism in a statement released by her publicist, saying "it was inappropriate and highly insensitive."

Film

Television