Page "Lily Tomlin" Paragraph 17

Tomlin made her dramatic debut in Robert Altman's Nashville, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, she played Linnea Reese, a straitlaced, gospel-singing, mother of two deaf children who has an affair with a womanizing country singer ( played by Keith Carradine ).

The Oscar that year went to Lee Grant for her role in Shampoo.

A comedy-mystery, The Late Show, teaming Tomlin with Art Carney, was a critical success in 1977.

One of the few widely panned projects of Tomlin's career, however, was 1978's Moment by Moment, directed and written by Wagner, which teamed Tomlin in a cross-generational older woman / younger man romance with John Travolta.