AceShowbiz - Actress Laura Linney is in mourning after her playwright father Romulus Linney lost his battle with lung cancer. He was 80. Linney passed away at his home in Germantown, New York on Saturday, January 15.

He wrote three novels and more than 30 plays in the U.S. and Europe during his long career, including "The Sorrows of Frederick", "Ambrosio", "FM" and "A Woman Without a Name". Perhaps his most widely-known work was "The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks", which appeared on Broadway in 1972.

He also taught at America's prestigious Columbia and Princeton universities, Hunter College and The New School. His wife, Laura Callanan, said he had been working on a novel at the time of his death, and had completed the libretto for an opera based on one of his plays.

In addition to his wife and his Oscar-nominated daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Susan.