Rosaleen Philomena Linehan (née McMenamin; born 1 June 1937) is an Irish stage, screen, and television actress.
Linehan was born in Dublin to a mother from Belfast and a father from East Donegal. Both her parents were older when she was born: her mother in her late 40s and her father in his 50s.
She attended University College Dublin and graduated in 1957 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Politics. She joined UCD Dramsoc on her first day of college and started acting professionally within two years of leaving the university.
Linehan began her acting career appearing in comedy revues she co-wrote with her husband, Fergus Linehan. Initially known solely as a singer and comedian, Linehan began pursuing more serious roles in the early 1980s, encouraged by playwrights who offered her new roles in support of this shift.
She has appeared on stage in plays including Blithe Spirit, The House of Bernarda Alba, The Seagull, andTwelfth Night, in which she "gave a mesmeric performance as Feste, the clown, [evoking] an ashen melancholoy".
She was nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Kate in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa at the 1992 Tony Awards. She starred as Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days on stage in 1996 opposite Barry McGovern and later on screen as part of the Beckett on Film project.
In 1972, Linehan won a Jacob's Award for her RTÉ Radio comedy series Get an Earful of This.
In film, she has appeared as Nurse Callan in Ulysses, May Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Aunt Fitzeustace in Fools of Fortune, Mrs. Canning in The Butcher Boy, Peggy Owens in About Adam, Mrs Matson in The Hi-Lo Country, and Millie O'Dowd in The Matchmaker.
On television, she played Bess Nugent in Sharpe's Gold, a voice artist on the Irish language children's TV series Inis Cúil in 2005 and appeared in Hugh Leonard's BBC sitcom Me Mammy. More recently, she played Deirdre O'Kane's mother in BitterSweet.
She was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Irish Theatre Awards in 2008. In 2014, she was awarded the UCD Alumni Award for Arts.
Linehan's father, Daniel McMenamin, was a Teachta Dála for Donegal from 1927 to 1961.
Linehan was married to Fergus Linehan, who died in 2016, with whom she had four children and eight grandchildren. Linehan lives in County Dublin.