Lynn Carlin (born Lynn Reynolds on January 31 1938 in Los Angeles, California) is an American actress. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in the movie Faces. Her father, Larry Reynolds, was a Hollywood business manager in the 1930s. She made her stage debut in Clare Booth Luce's The Women at the Laguna Beach Playhouse.

The former secretary turned actress earned her only Academy Award nomination in 1968 for her first feature role, as John Marley's suicidal wife, Maria, in John Cassavetes' Faces (1968). She subsequently played wives and mothers before practically disappearing from acting after the early 1980s. It took some years before Faces made her viable in Hollywood.

She followed up with ...tick...tick...tick (1970), as George Kennedy's ambitious, henpecking wife and returned to the offbeat as Buck Henry's wife searching for her missing daughter amid the hippies and drug culture of NYC in Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971). Other maternal roles have included Baxter (1972) and French Postcards (1979).

The small screen saw Carlin cast for her maternal presence as well. She is perhaps best recalled as the parent of growing teen Lance Kerwin in the TV-movie James at 15 (1977) and its subsequent spin-off. Carlin had a recurring role as wife to deputy commissioner Herb Edelman in Strike Force (1981 - 1982). Her work in TV-movies included supporting Shirley Jones and Lloyd Bridges in Silent Night, Lonely Night (1969), mothering teenage father Desi Arnaz Jr. in Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (1971), and playing wife to Peter Falk's disgruntled Korean War veteran turned thief in Step Out of Line (1971). Carlin was stuck in a burning skyscraper in Terror on the 40th Floor (1974), and, also that year, played the alcoholic Dick Van Dyke's wife in the well-received The Morning After. She played another wife, this time of Sam Houston, the father of Texas independence, in the historic The Honorable Sam Houston (1975).

In 1976, Carlin played Eve Plumb's mother in Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway. Her last TV-movie role was as the mother of three young men who are manipulated into breaking their father (Robert Mitchum) in A Killer in the Family (1983). Carlin was last seen in a guest appearance on Murder, She Wrote in 1984 as the wife of the episode's murder victim, Cornel Wilde

She was first married to Peter Hall in 1958 (divorced 1960), and then to Edward Carlin, by whom she had two children, from 1963 to 1974, when the marriage ended in divorce. Her oldest child by Carlin is noted podcaster and journalist Dan Carlin. She married John Wolfe in 1983.

Daughter of Laurence Kramer & Muriel Elizabeth (Ansley) Reynolds.

Father was Larry Reynolds, a Hollywood business manager in the 1930s.

Secretary for Robert Altman at Screen Gems at the time John Cassavetes (also at Screen Gems) was working on the script for Faces. He used her frequently to read lines as he was developing the script. She was later fired by Altman and went on to Faces and an Oscar nomination.