Celebrity Movie Blog

Who is Maura Tierney?

Maura Tierney was born February 3rd, 1965 in Boston, Massachusetts. She is best known as a member of the television hit show, ER, whose character was a lot like the Little Engine who Could. But before ER, she got her first tastes of Hollywood at each end of the spectrum. She nabbed a role in the made for t.v. movie Student Exchange (1987) with a light plot in which unpopular students switch roles with foreign exchange students. But importantly, the t.v. movie was produced by Walt Disney. Her first starring film role—again, at the opposite end of the Hollywood gamut— was in Dead Women in Lingerie (1987) about a serial killer knocking off immigrant garment workers. The B movie boasted partial nudity on her part, a 24 day filming schedule, and it was not released as a film, only as a DVD almost 20 years later. Tierneys come to the attention of the public and the entertainment industry with the role of Nurse Abbey Lockhart on ER in what was supposed to be a guest starring role. Instead, her work with Sally Field and the story line that sent her to medical school and finally turned her into a doctor brought her from the shadows to a star. It also got her 177 episodes from 1999-2007, and singled Tierney out from the ensemble for an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.