Who Is Lisa Linde? Meet James Marsden’s Ex-Wife and Former Actress

Lisa Linde is a former American actress best known for playing Ali McIntyre in the soap opera Days of Our Lives, and for her eleven year marriage to actor James Marsden. She stepped away from acting in 2000, the year she married, and has lived privately ever since.

Her short career is easy to overlook next to her famous former husband and her famous father, the songwriter Dennis Linde, who wrote Burning Love for Elvis Presley. But her story holds all three threads together. This article follows the public record: her Nashville roots, her television work, her marriage and children, and her quiet life after divorce.

Growing Up in a Songwriting Family in Nashville

Mary Elizabeth Linde, called Lisa, was born on 10 May 1972 in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is the home of country music, and in her house music was the family business. Her father, Dennis Linde, was one of the city’s most respected songwriters, a man other writers admired even when the public did not know his name.

Dennis Linde wrote Burning Love, which Elvis Presley took to No. 2 on the Billboard chart in 1972, the year Lisa was born, and which became Presley’s last major hit. He later wrote Goodbye Earl, a hit for the Dixie Chicks in 1999, and Callin’ Baton Rouge, a hit for Garth Brooks. He was named BMI Songwriter of the Year in 1994 and was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001.

Friends described Dennis Linde as witty, private and happy to stay out of industry events, a mystery man who rarely appeared in public even at the height of his success. Readers who know Lisa Linde’s later life will recognise the pattern. She grew up watching a talented father choose privacy, and as an adult she made almost exactly the same choice for herself and her children.

Her Acting Career in the 1990s

Lisa Linde built a small but real television career in the late 1990s. Her first listed credit is the action series Pacific Blue in 1997, in which she played Diane Whitaker in one episode. Pacific Blue followed a team of police officers who patrolled on bicycles, and a guest role on a show like that was a standard first step for a young actress in Los Angeles.

Her break came with Days of Our Lives, the long running NBC soap opera. From 1998 to 1999 she played Ali McIntyre in a remarkable 170 episodes. In soap opera, where episodes are filmed almost daily, 170 episodes in about a year means heavy, central work. Ali McIntyre was written as a nurse whose feelings for Dr. Mike Horton turned into an obsession, a storyline that gave a young actress intense material and a loyal daytime audience.

Her final credit is The Darkling, a television movie released in 2000, in which she played Charlotte Avenel. The film was a dark fantasy story about a man who makes a deal with a sinister force in search of success. After The Darkling, Linde made no further screen appearances. Her acting career, counted plainly, lasted about three years and produced one genuinely substantial role, which is more than most hopeful actors ever achieve.

Marriage to James Marsden

Lisa Linde married James Marsden on 22 July 2000. The couple had met in the mid 1990s, when both were in their early twenties and building acting careers in Los Angeles, and they dated for several years before the wedding. Marsden was 26 and Linde was 28 when they married.

The timing matters to their story. In 2000, the same year as the wedding and her final acting role, Marsden’s career was about to change completely. He played Cyclops in the film X-Men that year, the first of several appearances in the series, and went on to roles in Superman Returns, Hairspray, 27 Dresses and Enchanted. Linde, by contrast, stepped back from acting and focused on the family home as his schedule filled with film work.

The couple had two children. Their son, Jack Holden Marsden, was born on 1 February 2001, and their daughter, Mary James Marsden, was born on 10 August 2005. Marsden has often said that being a father is the role he is most proud of, and during the marriage the family kept a notably normal profile for a rising film star’s household, with few public appearances beyond work events.

Losing Her Father and Honouring His Work

One of the hardest chapters of Linde’s married life came in 2006. Dennis Linde died on 22 December that year at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, aged 63, from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a rare lung disease. His daughter, listed in reports of his death as Lisa Marsden, was the family member who spoke to the press at the time.

The loss led to one of the few public projects attached to her name. In 2009, Lisa Linde and James Marsden sponsored a benefit concert for the Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis in her father’s honour, titled A Night of Burnin’ Love, a clear play on his most famous song. Performers on the night included Rascal Flatts, Montgomery Gentry and Mark Chesnutt, all artists connected to the country world her father had served for decades.

The event says a great deal about her. She did not return to acting or seek publicity for herself. She used what public standing she had to raise money and attention for the disease that had taken her father, in the city where he had written his songs. It remains the clearest example of how she has chosen to use her name since leaving television.

Divorce in 2011

On 23 September 2011, Lisa Linde filed for divorce from James Marsden, citing irreconcilable differences, after eleven years of marriage. The split was handled without public argument. No accusations were traded in the press, and reports at the time noted that she sought joint custody of their two children, who were then ten and six years old.

Marsden spoke about the divorce once, in depth, years later. In a 2018 interview with Men’s Health, he called it by far the hardest thing he had been through, saying it was the first time he felt he had lost his equilibrium. He was clear that neither of them was a bad person. In his telling, they had married very young and simply grew into different people as they got older, a view Linde has never publicly disputed because she has never publicly discussed the marriage at all.

After the divorce, Marsden went on to further film and television success, including Westworld, Dead to Me and the Sonic the Hedgehog films, and had a third child, William, born in 2012 with model Rose Costa. Linde’s path was the opposite of public. She did not remarry in any widely reported way, did not return to acting, and gave no interviews about the split.

Lisa Linde Today

Today, Lisa Linde lives entirely outside the entertainment news cycle. She has no new acting credits since 2000, no public social media presence that draws coverage, and no reported business or media ventures. Her children are now adults. Jack Marsden has made occasional public appearances connected with fashion and entertainment, while Mary James has stayed as private as her mother.

Because so little is published, some websites fill the silence with invented net worth figures and life stories for her. None of those numbers come from Linde herself or from any verifiable source, and this article does not repeat them. The honest record is short: a Nashville childhood in a famous songwriting house, three busy years on television, an eleven year marriage, two children, one heartfelt charity concert, and then a private life kept private for more than two decades.

There is something consistent and even admirable in that arc. Lisa Linde tried fame, in soap opera’s fastest lane, and walked away from it at 28 on her own terms. She has never looked back in public since.

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FAQs

Who is Lisa Linde?

Lisa Linde, full name Mary Elizabeth Linde, is a former American actress born in Nashville in 1972. She is best known for playing Ali McIntyre in Days of Our Lives from 1998 to 1999, and as the former wife of actor James Marsden and daughter of songwriter Dennis Linde.

What shows was Lisa Linde in?

She has three screen credits: Pacific Blue in 1997, in which she played Diane Whitaker, Days of Our Lives from 1998 to 1999, in which she played Ali McIntyre across 170 episodes, and the television movie The Darkling in 2000, in which she played Charlotte Avenel.

How long were Lisa Linde and James Marsden married?

They married on 22 July 2000 and Linde filed for divorce on 23 September 2011, citing irreconcilable differences. The marriage lasted eleven years and produced two children, Jack, born in 2001, and Mary James, born in 2005.

Who was Lisa Linde’s father?

Her father was Dennis Linde, a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member who wrote Burning Love for Elvis Presley, Goodbye Earl for the Dixie Chicks and Callin’ Baton Rouge for Garth Brooks. He died in 2006, and Linde later co-sponsored a 2009 benefit concert in his memory.

Final Thoughts

Lisa Linde’s story connects three worlds: Nashville songwriting through her father Dennis, daytime television through her own work on Days of Our Lives, and Hollywood film through her marriage to James Marsden. She belonged fully to the first two and chose to leave the third behind. Her record is small, clear and complete: a substantial soap role, a family raised away from the cameras, and a long, deliberate privacy that she has maintained ever since. For readers asking who Lisa Linde is, that quiet consistency is the truest answer.

Featured photo: James Marsden – photo by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons