Maura Tierney

Maura Lynn Tierney (born February 3, 1965) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Lisa Miller on the sitcom NewsRadio (1995–1999), Abby Lockhart on the medical drama ER (1999–2009), and Helen Solloway on the mystery drama The Affair (2014–2019), the last of which won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.

Tierney has also appeared in numerous films, including Primal Fear (1996), Liar Liar (1997), Primary Colors (1998), Insomnia (2002), The Iron Claw (2023), and Twisters (2024).

Tierney was born and raised in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the eldest of three children in an Irish American Catholic family. Her mother Pat (née James) is a real estate broker, while her father, Joseph M. Tierney, was a prominent Boston politician who served on the Boston City Council for 15 years.

Tierney attended Mount Alvernia Academy Elementary School and Notre Dame Academy in Hingham, Massachusetts, where she studied drama, which led to her appearance at the Boston Globe Drama Festival. After graduation, she attended New York University, where she majored first in dance and then in drama.

After appearing in several plays, Tierney moved to Los Angeles in 1987, beginning with a role in Disney's made-for-TV film Student Exchange. Tierney's first starring role in a film was in a low-budget independent film called Dead Women in Lingerie, which was shot in 24 days.

Tierney had a number of small roles in film and television and a co-starring role in 704 Hauser, a short-lived 1994 spin-off of All in the Family. She first received regular national exposure with her leading role in the sitcom NewsRadio from 1995 to 1999. While part of the NewsRadio cast, she also starred in several successful films of the late 1990s and early 2000s such as Primal Fear, Liar Liar, Primary Colors, Forces of Nature and Welcome to Mooseport.

After NewsRadio was canceled, Tierney decided not to star in another sitcom:

[W]hen NewsRadio got canceled, (...) I thought, there's probably not gonna be something like [that show] again for me... So then, when ER called (...) that was a way to stay in [television] that would remain interesting for me.