Around this time, Columbia University had added a new theater program. Lin applied and was accepted into a three year program that kept her working twelve hours a day in the world she had come to love. Acting classes, voice classes, and singing classes all culminated in a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater and an introduction into the burgeoning off-off-Broadway theater scene of New York. Once again, she was working with men and women who, like herself, would go on to become legends in their field.

Irene Fornes, Murray Mednick, Wynn Handman, Julia MIles, and Harvey Fierstein. She worked with them all and and more fully developed her love of acting and the thrill she received from sinking into a character.

“The idea of stepping into another human being’s life is very tantalizing because it’s safe when you do it on stage. It’s a safe place to experiment and I still feel that about acting. I feel like it’s the safest place to go to the deepest part of yourself that no one else needs or even wants to hear about in real life, but it’s a safe haven for you to really explore your deepest everything. Your deepest fears, your deepest loves, your deepest anxieties. And then, when the director yells cut or the curtain comes down you get to be recognized for having gone to those dark places and get to come back to real life. There’s something very exciting about that process.”

She continued her work in theater and continued honing her craft.  She even picked up a film credit or two. Jack Nicholson flew her down to Mexico for two weeks to shoot a small role called the Parasol Lady in his film Goin’ South, and she appeared in Alone in the Dark, an offering from New Line’s early days. And then, one day, Wes Craven walked into the offices to meet with Bob Shaye about a film he wanted to make called A Nightmare on Elm Street. Lin played the role of Nancy’s English teacher in the film and the actress says people still tell her how memorable she was to this day. It’s both funny and flattering to the actress considering how she got the role in the first place.

“I was cast in A Nightmare on Elm Street because my brother Bob told Wes Craven, ‘You need to put my sister in your movie,'” the actress laughs. “Bob used to drive me crazy because he would introduce me to people as ‘my sister, the actress’ and I would just freeze up inside when he did that. Of course, I came to realize later that it was just a good bit of brother/sister teasing and that he really respected me for what I was trying to do. But at the time, I just wanted to disappear whenever he’d say it.”

Even so, with Bob’s insistence, Lin had a role in what would become one of the most iconic horror franchises in film history. She also had the chance to return and play another small role when Craven returned to the franchise to create the New Nightmare. However, in neither of those movies, did she actually work with the franchise’s iconic star, Robert Englund. As a matter of fact, they wouldn’t share time on the screen together until years later in the cult hit 2001 Maniacs, but we’ll get to that a little later.

After Nightmare, New Line productions really began to take off and when they needed to fill the role of a sheriff’s secretary named Sally in the creature feature, Critters, Lin fell right into the part. Shaye left quite an impression in the role and she returned for the sequel a few years later. It was a golden time for her. The roles were coming faster and more varied by the day. Crossing genre lines she would appear in Amityville: A New Generation, Dumb and Dumber, The Nature of the Beast, and countless others.

And then in the late 90s, she took on two of her most memorable and hilarious roles in Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary.  Outside horror films, the actress says, these are the two roles people often quote when they approach her.

“I still get stopped for those. I just had to write, ‘Tell me what is it about good sex that makes me have to crap?’ That’s become one of the funniest lines ever written. I’m so fortunate that no one can take those things away. That’s one of the great things about being in the movies. Those will live forever.”

Click on the next page to read all about Lin’s work with Robert Englund and a little movie called Dead End that opened the door to a franchise she never saw coming!

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