Maura Lynn Tierney was born on February 3, 1965, in Boston, Massachusetts, the oldest of three children, to a prosperous politician father, Joseph Tierney, and a real estate agent mother, Pat Tierney. She grew up in the exclusive Hyde Park district of Boston and attended Notre Dame Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in Hingham, Massachusetts. In 1983 she moved to New York to study drama at NYU and received a BFA degree in Theater Studies. She then honed her skills at the Circle in the Square Theater School, but did not complete her studies there. Opting to pursue her acting career in Tinseltown, she moved to Los Angeles in 1987. She starred in NewsRadio and ER. She has also been in many big screen films like Liar Liar, Welcome to Mooseport, and Primary Colors.