Melanie Lynskey

Melanie Lynskey (New Zealand Listener, 21 January 2006)
By Sarah Barnett

After being plucked from New Plymouth Girls High in fairytale fashion, and cast as the matricidal lead in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, Melanie Lynskey, now 28, had a four-year wait before her next role. Now in the hit US sitcom Two and a Half Men as Rose, Charlie Sheen's sweet stalker, Lynskey has considerably lengthened her CV, and proven her chops where you'd least expect. Read reviews of some of the less well-received movies in which she has appeared (Coyote Ugly, Sweet Home Alabama), and you'll no doubt find the phrase, "The one exception is Lynskey..." Her most recent movies are Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and the indie Park, both due out this year.

You wanted to be an actor from a young age, yet your discovery was almost out of the blue.
I had the whole thing planned out. I looked at what other successful actors had done, like Katie Wolfe, who was from New Plymouth, and said, "Well, there's what Katie Wolfe did. She did this, then she did this, and now she's an actor." So I had the plan there, and then it just exploded. Now, everything that has happened has not been anything like I imagined, but it's been wonderful.

How was working with Clint Eastwood?
It was amazing. I had a drink with him and two other actors one night, and he was just telling us stories for two hours, and I was sitting there thinking, "If this turns out to be the worst movie in the world, and it's an embarrassment, it'll be totally worth it to have had this time." It was so great.

Do you still find yourself in situations like that, thinking, "How did I get here?"
Oh my God! Of course. It's such a miracle. Every time I get a job – I'm such a pessimist – I just always think, "All right, I'm going to get fired."

Do you prefer movies or TV?
My whole life in acting has been doing movies, so I'm used to moving on and doing a different character after three months. So, doing this TV show has been amazing, because I really love this character and to get to stay with her and do this for such a long time – you sort of feel like you're building a history. I like that a lot.

Why is a stalker such a lovable character?
I don't know. I think it's amazing that they've done that. I think it has a lot to do with how great Charlie is - his responses are always the perfect mix of "oh my God!" and affection.

Have you had stalkers of your own?
I did a long time ago. Before this ever happened, I had a weird stalker, but he seems to have gone away.

He wasn't as adorable as Rose?
No, not at all.

Martin Sheen was a guest on the show.
It was crazy. He was playing my father, so I was supposed to be really comfortable with him, and I was so terrified. Badlands is one of my favourite movies of all time, and I was just like, "Oh my God, I can't believe - I'm not good enough to be doing this, it's too crazy!" But he said that Rose is his favourite character, so he was happy to be my dad. He was so sweet.

How's life in LA?
I really love it. I have a nice group of friends and I love my little house.

Is it a fancy TV star's house with famous neighbours and a pool?
No! All my neighbours are Mexican families, and I chose it because it looks like a little house you'd see in Grey Lynn or something. It's a little old Victorian, and it has a pohutukawa out the front - I just was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe it!" I just had my garden done with only New Zealand plants. So I have flax and ferns and all sorts of things. It's great.

Do you act as a halfway house for other Kiwi actors showing up over there with their sleeping bags?
Yes! In summer, it was like we were taking bookings for a hotel. People would call up and say, "Oh, so what's June 16th to the 21st looking like?" and I'd be like, "Well, the main room's taken, but you can have the day bed in the study."

Are you looking for projects back here?
I always am. I was thinking about doing a play back home, but it just wasn't going to work out with my schedule for other things, but I'd love it. Any excuse to come back.

Is there a chance you could work with Peter Jackson again?
I think I would have to ask. He has his choice of every actor in the universe. But obviously I would love to. He's amazing. Obviously, he's a great director. He's a good man.

You've recently made Park with Billy Baldwin.
I really loved it. It was scary because I had to be naked, and that was terrifying. It's this scene where we're nudists with other people - a girl called Annie who looks like a supermodel - so that was a little bit challenging for my self-esteem. I went to the gym so I could feel good about myself, but I feel a little bit responsible: someone's saying, "Be naked in this movie looking the way you look", so I'd rather do that so if anyone sees the movie they can think, "Okay, she can do that and she's comfortable." It's always disappointing to me when you see an actress in a movie and she's obviously starved herself, and I would like to do something more positive. But it's scary.

Do you get nervous about your family and friends watching it?
Oh, I hadn't really thought about it.

Sorry.
Somehow, I hadn't really thought about it – but, yes! Maybe I'll tell my dad not to go.

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Slice of Heaven (Sunday Star-Times, 15 August 2004)
By Megan Nicol Reed

"Always the bridesmaid, never the bride . . . " It's the story of Melanie Lynskey's decade-long career. First she got to watch from the sidelines as her Heavenly Creatures co-star Kate Winslet's career rose to Titanic-sized heights, then she got to play Drew Barrymore's ugly stepsister in the Hollywood remake of Cinderella fairytale Ever After. And in Coyote Ugly and Sweet Home Alabama, she played the small-town, homely best friend to Piper Perabo and Reese Witherspoon's sexy leads.

But the former New Plymouth girl is satisfied with her lot. In fact, she seems down-right chuffed. Her role in TV2's new sitcom Two and a Half Men, starring Charlie Sheen, means a regular pay cheque; she's recently bought a house in Los Angeles with her actor boyfriend Jimmi Simpson, who she met on the set of the Stephen King mini-series Rose Red, and the couple have got themselves a dog.

Lynskey, who has only just received a green card, auditioned for three TV shows and says she is absolutely thrilled to be doing Two and a Half Men, which by the end of its first season in the US, was being touted as America's number one comedy. How did she choose between the roles?

"Well, actually, this was the only one I got," she laughs.

Apart from playing the leading lady in the Kiwi-made road movie Snakeskin, Lynskey hasn't bagged any big roles since Peter Jackson's wife Fran Walsh discovered her as a school girl and cast her as mother-killer Pauline in Heavenly Creatures. Hollywood has been kinder to her than most and while her output hasn't been stellar, it has been consistent. But the movie business is not getting any easier, says the 27-year-old.

"I was working, but not at a level where I was being offered a lot of prime roles. The sort of roles I would have usually tried for were going to really famous actresses. I found myself losing stuff to Rene Zellweger and Cameron Diaz. It just started to feel like I wanted a part I could do more with."

Her character Rose was initially intended to be a guest-starring role, but when the show's pilot was picked up by a network, the producers asked her to stay. Rose is the "attractive, offbeat neighbour" of Charlie (played by Sheen). The pair had a brief fling and now he can't get rid of her. According to Lynskey, who despite four years in LA is refreshingly un-fabulous, Rose is a stalker.

Sheen plays an advertising jingle writer with a Malibu mansion, a flash car in the garage and an endless supply of gorgeous women in his bed. But when his neurotic brother turns up on his doorstep with his 10-year-old son after his wife decides she might be a lesbian, Charlie's playboy lifestyle is turned on its head. What follows is a predictable clash of personalities, tempered with a drizzle of cynicism (albeit American-style) and a dollop of schmaltz. The odd clever one-liner and Lynskey's quirkiness keep it watchable: Rose constantly peering through Charlie's door is the sort of running gag which endows sitcoms with cult status.

Lynskey puts the show's success down to Sheen. "I think people really love Charlie. There's an enormous amount of goodwill towards him."

And what does she think of the great star? "We get on terribly. I can't stand him."

Oh? My muck-raking ears prick up. "No, he's great. He's really quiet and shy and sweet."

Surely those stories in the gossip mags about his partying days being over aren't true? This, after all, is the man whose drug-fuelled downward spiral was rivalled only by Robert Downey jnr's[sic] excess.

"I didn't know what to expect. They say people are reformed, but are they ever? But no, he's totally into his wife and baby."

Lynskey, who answers the phone with a certified American drawl but veers towards a Kiwi twang over the course of our conversation, says she tries to get home on a regular basis. But coming from the anonymity of LA, these days home can feel a little bit weird.

"People stare at me and I think there must be something wrong with how I'm dressed."

She had always imagined if she bought a house it would be in Wellington, but when she found the house of her dreams, a little old Victorian place, she couldn't resist. In an area of LA called Echo Park, it sounds more quaint than flash. To the whir of a police helicopter flying overhead, Lynskey describes it as being "in the 'hood.' " On her way inside to escape the noise, she knocks over an empty wine bottle.

It's a long way from New Plymouth.

"I think if somebody had come up to me then and told me this is what your life is going to be like, I never would have believed them."

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'Two and a Half Men' Are Plenty for Lynskey
By Jay Bobbin

The focus is on the fellows on Two and a Half Men, but women often are around, too.

One of the most consistent is charmingly obsessed neighbor Rose, played by Melanie Lynskey on the Monday-night CBS sitcom, the latest People's Choice Award winner for favorite new comedy series.

Rose's brief liaison with committed bachelor Charlie (Charlie Sheen) was much more to her, which is why she turns up continually at the house he shares with his divorced brother, Alan (Jon Cryer), and Alan's young son, Jake (Angus T. Jones). Ever an optimist, Rose hopes for another chance with Charlie; she doesn't even mind him using her as a convenient decoy to ward off other women.

Rose has yet another rival for Charlie's attention coming in May, as Heather Locklear (formerly Sheen's leading lady on Spin City) guest stars as Alan's attorney. She spends a night with Charlie, then wants him at her beck and call. It's an arrangement Charlie chafes under, leaving Alan worried about the possible impact the situation may have on him and Jake.

After making a big splash a decade ago in her first movie, the critically praised Heavenly Creatures (which also gave Kate Winslet international prominence), New Zealand native Lynskey worked steadily in movies from Ever After and Coyote Ugly to Sweet Home Alabama and Shattered Glass. She says she began considering U.S. TV series work last year because "on a practical level, I'd just gotten my green card. Before that, the time between being cast for a show and starting work on it was too quick to even get a work visa, so doing a TV show wasn't even an option.

"When I finally got my green card, I thought, 'Well, maybe I'll just see what's happening.' Last pilot season, I read some scripts but didn't go out for anything until I read Two and a Half Men. It made me laugh, and it was kind of perfect at the time because Rose was just a guest-starring role. There was no commitment whatsoever, so I thought it would be fun to go in and play this crazy woman once. It also would give me a taste of what it was like to do a sitcom. Then, when the show got picked up, the part was well-received and the producers asked me to be a regular."

Their plan to make Rose more than a one-note joke has worked, much to Lynskey's relief. "I've been getting a lot of fan mail," she says, "so people seem to be responding. Sometimes, I'll read one of the scripts and wonder, 'Is this more creepy than funny?' In one show, Charlie wakes up in the middle of the night and I'm in bed with him. If that happened to me, I would be horrified. Chuck [Lorre, co-creator and co-executive producer of the series] always tells me, 'Just play it really sweet and as if you're completely right. Then no one can blame you.'"

Indeed, Lynskey evokes a sweet demeanor on Two and a Half Men, matched with a lilting voice not far removed from Megan Mullally's on Will & Grace. Lynskey's American accent on the show belies her overseas roots, which are evident in regular conversation with her. She reveals Sheen didn't realize her background until they were making the show's second episode: "He turned around and said, 'What's this, uh, voice? What are you doing?' I said, 'I'm just talking.' Then he said, 'Hmmm. Is that some kind of actor-y thing?'"

Lynskey still enjoys being with Sheen, Cryer and the other series regulars as much as she did at first. "I can remember thinking while we were making the pilot, 'It can be this easy?' They don't have any egos, and it was just fun. I thought it would be a nice place to be." It's also a highly successful place, since Two and a Half Men is this season's third-highest-rated comedy (right behind its lead-in, Everybody Loves Raymond, with Friends topping the list). "It seems funny to me that it's all worked so well," Lynskey says. "I have so much respect for the people who do this. It's so hard to keep the energy up and to make people laugh."

Peter Jackson, the fellow New Zealander who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, gave Lynskey her big break by casting her as a murder-minded girl in Heavenly Creatures. She reflects, "I don't know what I would be doing today otherwise. I always wanted to be an actress, but to be in Heavenly Creatures at the age of 15 literally changed my life. It took a long time to get other jobs, because the character I played in that movie isn't someone you'd look at and automatically think, 'I can imagine her in my movie.'

"Also, I had no idea how to navigate Hollywood or the acting profession or anything like that. I finished high school and went to university and figured I'd come back and have another look later."

With that taken care of, Lynskey still retains solid connections from her earlier days. "Everyone who won Oscars for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King also worked on Heavenly Creatures," she reports. "I was crying my eyes out that night."

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CBS Interview for Two and a Half Men

"Gosh, it's all so much fun. Um, I like how I just appear sometimes on the deck. But it's really cold out on the decks--they have wind machines that make it look like the trees are blowing, but I--It's fun, and I also like that I seem to be becoming more of a normal person rather than this stalker all the time....

"Because she's so different from me it's fun to play. 'Cause she's so sort of energetic. She's this rich girl from Malibu, and she just is completely clueless about, like, you know, the way she's so intense, and I'm not really at all. I'm kind of laid back, so it's really fun to come to work and really be, like, all dancing around....

"It's lovely. He's so great. He's so generous and funny and kind and just works so hard my god it's amazing, and he's so funny on the show as well....

"Charlie Sheen plays a free-wheeling bachelor who lives on the beach in Malibu, and his straitlaced brother moves in with him and brings his little boy along, and they all try to live together. And then I guess there are these three women who sort of come in and out of their lives--and that's the brother John Cryer's ex-wife and me and Holland, who's their mother. Well, my character's a maniac, stalking Charlie. She's not really. She's just a bit misguided. I think she thinks she's met the man of her dreams, so she's just going to go after him, but she's a sweet girl, I think."

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Melanie Lynskey: Finding Her Place (Staples, Oct/Nov, 2003)
by Gemma Gracewood

Days before an early morning conversation with Melanie Lynskey, I caught a Sky Movies screening of Heavenly Creatures. I hadn't watched it in years, preparing for this interview instead by renting the laughable Coyote Ugly, the odd Sweet Home Alabama, and the '70s teen romp Detroit Rock City.

But as I flicked randomly through channels, there they were: Lynskey and Winslet. Parker and Hulme. Still two of the most incredible, compelling debut performances in film. Lynskey's Pauline Parker is pouty, determined, at times downright scary. Dark shadows appear beneath her eyes as quickly as a rosy glow across her cheeks vanishes. She switches from hysteria to calculating stillness in seconds. She's gorgeous, she's ugly, passionate and brutal. She's a 16-year-old murderer, after all, and Lynskey played it perfectly.

She deserves to be what she is: one of New Zealand's most internationally successful actors. In the decade since her Heavenly Creatures debut, she has played side-kick, saucy temptress, ugly sister, wacko library girl, quirky cop and best friend alongside such Hollywood recognisables as Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon, Katie Holmes and that girl from Coyote Ugly. In fifteen films, she's made out in a church confessional, murdered her mother, met cowboy violence on South Island back-roads and perfected a New Jersey accent. And she has infused each role with her dark-eyed beauty, eccentric humour and minxy intelligence.

Right now, Lynskey is ensconced in her first full-time job, the television sitcom Two and a Half Men. I[n] it, Charlie Sheen plays Charlie Harper, a self-absorbed bachelor and advertising jingle-writer, whose life is upturned when his soon-to-be-divorced younger brother Alan (played by Jon Cryer, Pretty in Pink's superb Ducky) moves in with his ten-year-old son. This is big news: not only is Melanie acting alongside two of the best of the 1980s teen-movie genration (who could forget Charlie Sheen's pash with Jennifer Grey in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?), the sitcom is also one of the most heavily promoted releases on the CBS network's fall schedule.

Lynskey plays Charlie Sheen's ex-girlfriend in the new sitcom. She has a gorgeous wardrobe and a slew of hilarious lines as her "beautiful but unstable" character refuses to believe she and Charlie have broken up. "He can't get rid of her," Lynskey laughs. "In the first episode, she's trying to get into his house. She gets in a wanders around it, trying on his clothes. She's crazy. I laughed so much when I read the script. I mean, it's a sitcom so it's gotta be funny, but they're not always, are they? This one is funny."

It's very early on a mid-winter morning in Wellington and I'm sitting next to the heater with a fresh pot of tea. Miles away at midday, Melanie Lynskey is releaxing at home in the year-round warmth of Los Angeles, explaining how she finally made her break into full-time television. Until now, she'd been working in the United States on a performer's visa, so her small screen work was limited to a Stephen King mini-series and a few episodes of The Shield. Finally, her Green Card came through, meaning she could enter the annual television "pilot season"--the best chance an actor has of landing a decent role in a new TV series. And on her first pilot season, she landed one.

Film is still a priority thought. She'll soon be onscreen in Shattered Glass, with a to-die-for cast that includes Hayden "Anakin" Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard, Chloe Sevigny and Hank Azaria. It tells the true story of Stephen Glass (Christensen), a prolific and popular young Washington[,] DC reporter who excelled in writing flashy pieces for prestigious publications such as The New Republic, George, Rolling Stone and Harpers.

Based on Buzz Bissinger's Vanity Fair article, the film explores how Glass managed to fool everyone around him--it is belived that he made up 27 of the 41 articles he wrote for the New Republic, not to mention several of his freelance pieces for those other magazines.

Lynsky[sic] plays Glass' envious, hard-working office mate, who excels at writing dry policy pieces. "To prepare for the character, the director asked me to research and write an article about farm subsidies, which was really fun! I'm proud of myslef[sic] for finding out about farm subsidies! It wasn't a great article, but you get the idea of my character. She's great friends with Hayden's character, but she's jealous of him. She wasn't to be the one writing the glossy articles."

Shattered Glass is a timely film, given the recent trouble that other American publications--including the venerable and venerated New York Times--have had with writers fabricating stories. In a clever piece of casting, the Times' most recent embarrassment, Jayson Blair, is reportedly reviewing Shattered Glass for Esquire. And Stephen Glass? He has completed a law degree and written a "fictional novel" about a young reporter who, ahem, invented most of his stories.

It seems you can't do anything wrong in the States, and if you do, it is possible to use it to your advantage, to reinvent yourself and get back on that celebrity horse. It's a second-chance kinda nation, and in a roudabout way, Melanie Lynskey has benefited from that come-back attitude.

She was discovered just weeks before principal shooting began on Heavenly Creatures, during screenwriter Fran Walsh's epic search through lower-North Island classrooms for a Pauline Parker to play opposite Kate Winslet's Juliet Hulme. The rapid critical and Oscar-nominated success of Heavenly Creatures saw Lynskey set her sights higher than the stage career in Wellington she'd been preparing for. But it wasn't a snap.

Much has been written about her first venture to Hollywood. About how Kate Winslet went from strength to strength while Lynskey faced a townful of young, confident, competitive beauties and high-tailed it home after just six weeks, enrolling at university and dealing with a growing depression, whereupon drector Gaylene Preston got a hold of her and told her to do what she needed to do to make herself a stronger person, and get back out there again. Which she did, landing a role as the not-so-ugly stepsister to Drew Barrymore's Cinderella in Ever After.

But in those glossy articles, it sounds too easy. I want the details, I ask Lynskey. On a practical level, how does one go about sorting oneself out?

It wa[s]n't easy, she acknowledges. "The thing is, you can't say to somebody who is depressed, 'snap out of it'. It's easy to feel very overwhelmed and unable to deal with the smallest thing. Everything seems daunting. So Gaylene just told me 'write a list of eveytthing you think is stopping you'. And I did. It was jsut[sic] incredible. And then she said to work through each of those things one by one. And I did."

To actually write the list and tick each item off--get fit, take voice lessons and so on--was both Lynskey's challenge and her triumph. She still reminds herself of that list, every day. "I am obsessive about writing lists! I'm always making lists of goals and never feel like I've done enough. My boyfriend is always telling me that I have, he's always telling me to appreciate what I've done."

That's not to say that the depression has permanently lifted. It revisited her in force more recently, leading Lynskey to do a whole heap of work on learning not to be so hard on herself, learning to be happy with what she's got. She's reluctant to reveal to a New Zealand audience that her healing process has involved sessions with a holistic doctor, because it "sounds so LA".

"I feel so embarrassed. I sound like such a flake! I fel tlike[sic] it was so wanky and self-obsessed of me .But[sic] I was depressed and crying all the time, just feeling really sad. You know, when you're depressed, you really need a lot of energy to even get out of bed in the morning. It's horrible.

"Actually making the appointment with him was more important than the actual session. It was me making the decision with myself, like, okay I wanna do something."

The doctor discussed diet issues with her. She has cut out sugar and white flour, doesn't drink coffee, and doesn't drink alcohol--except for wine. He gave her some acupuncture and "weird light therapy".[sic] She's not sure if that worked, "but he gave me some very good advice. Whenever I feel like I'm starting to get depressed, he has given me some things to use, so that it doesn't feel like an unstoppable force coming down on me. I can control it now.

"A lot of the emotional stuff can freak you out, but you want to hold on to it, you want to protect it because it's part of your art and part of who you are. I know for myself, I've had horrible problems with depression, I've had al kinds of emotional issues. And I've thought 'you can use this'. But then sometimes you just have to let go of the art. You realise you're playing the 'best friend' in some Hollywood movie, so there's no need to torture yourself!

"I think I understand that feeling because now I'm really truly happy for the first time in ten years. I just don't want all that drama all the time. It's so funny to be happy all the time. It's crazy. I wake up, and want to be awake!"

Home is a one-bedroom apartment near Hollywood Boulevard, in a Los Angeles neighborhood [t]hat's moving quickly from run-down to cool. She shares the places with Mouse--her chihuahua-dachshund cross--and her "beautiful" boyfriend Jimmi Simpson, also an actor. They met on the set of the aforementioned Stephen King min[i]-series, Rose Red. He's a quirky fellow who has also featured in Amy Heckerling's film Loser and episodes of the Keifer Sutherland series 24.

Lynskey has filled their apartment with New Zealand art, mainly from her other home, Taranaki. She ahs works by assemblage artist Dale Copeland, including a piece involving sardines and a handkerchief. She has beautiful works by New Plymouth artist and friend Sarah Sampson, a glitterly, velveteen map of New Zealand, and stacks of New Zealand music.

The Spanish-style apartment building with polished floors is ten thousand miles away from the tall, wooden Wellington villa that she dreams of one day owning, but it's home.

She guiltily confesses that the feeling of having two lives--one in New Zealand, another in the States--is starting to dissipate. "On my last trip home to New Zealand, I felt like I was missing 'home'! It sounds disloyal to say, but its because my boyfriend is here, my dog, my work is here, a lot of my friends are here.

"All my friends used to live in Wellington. Now they are all over New Zealand and the world. I think when there used to be that group, I felt like I was part of it. That I was the one thing missing from that place."

Years in Los Angeles have also helped her to fit in, to learn to speak American. It's not a case of having the right accent. Rather, it's a way of speaking with a purpose. "Americans are so competitive. When I first got here I was meek and shy and you have to be forceful." Not just at auditions, but in everyday life. Dinner party conversation in America may as well be an Olympic event. "So often in conversation, people have prepared stories," Lynskey laughs. "It's kind of like on American talkshows--they have a set format, and set anecdotes. It feels so artificial to me."

Though she has found that she is more independent than she ever thought she would be in Los Angeles, she also observes having lost a certain way of life. "When I was living in Wellington, people are just so relaxed there. You can walk around everywhere, make improm[p]tu plans, people call you from restaurants to say 'come on down'. It's so relaxed. You can see people all the time and have very accessible friendships. Here, you have to make a lunch date with one of your closest friends for the following week. People don't pop over or drop in."

She has introduced a bit of her Wellington way of life to her LA friends, though. "Now that I've been out here a while, I think because I'm more relaxed about things, I have friends calling to see if they can pop round--but even then they call ahead to say 'Is it still okay if I drop by?'!"

And New Zealand drops by. One of her four siblings has just been through for a ten-day visit--she entertained him by sending him to see friends of hers who were staying in flash hotels so that he could check out the fancy swimming pools. And Goodshirt passes through on their way to the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas earlier this year. "Passing through" is a bit of a misnomer: the entire band, plus manager and roadie, spent a week in her one-bedroom apartment. It's jsut[sic] as well Melanie, Jimmi and their friends are such huge fans.

"[Lead singer] Rodney Fisher has beenone of my best friends since we were ten when he gave me a sample vial of perfume from his mother's pharmacy. I'm so proud of them, they're doing really well. Rodney sent me and my boyfriend the demo songs from their next album, and its the best CD I've heard in my life." You heard it here first.

Lynskey usually stocks up on New Zealand music and art on her visits home. She thinks a best friend's wedding on Waiheke Island will be her next chance to catch up on the latest music, and she asks what's good at the moment. I recommend a few local websites where she can not only listen to the latest sounds from home, but buy them too. "Can you do that?!" Later, she emails to say that she sapent all night on Smokecds.com--"I don't know how I ever lived without it!"

Being a full-time CBS employee provides a good income for an actress used to doing one or two movies per year. Is she squirrelling it away or drinking champagne? A bit of both. "I go out for dinner a lot. I buy a lot of shoes. I mean, I live in a one bedroom apartment, I can't think about buying a house in LA, but I put money away so that one day I could buy a house in Wellington."

Which reminds me of a story in the Evening Post a few years back: "Heavenly Creature wants Wellington house". An odd little story, which didn't find much out. Yes, she wanted to buy a house, but couldn't afford one. Yes, she had been dating a Wellington man, but declined to name him.

"I know. There was this one period where I was home for a while and there was an article about me every week. It's so weird! My god! The things they were writing about me. There was this one time when I was 'sighted' in a restaurant with my 'new beau', apparently, and his glass of wine blew over the people next to us, and I was like "Oh my god, I'm sorry", and then it's in the newspaper?"

She recalls there was a fascination with exposing who her boyfriend was. They named one Wellingtonian, but alas for the media, that relationship was already over. They called another ex-boyfriend, Scarfies director Robert Sarkies. "They were like 'You're the boyfriend!' And he was like 'No! Too late!' Robert loves stuff like that, like he was playing a game with them. And he called me up and said 'They've found me! They think it's me!' Oh my god, how ridiculous. Why me?"

But it's the only time she's really been bothered by the media--New Zealand or otherwise--and she was more embarrassed than annoyed. The internet is different, of course. She has her fan-sites, mostly deferential. "My dad went and did a Google search on me once and said 'Oh, you know Mel, there are some, um, websites claiming to have, um, naked pictures of you. And I checked them out, and they're not. I thought you'd like to know that."

This low key fandom-at-a-distance may change. Word on the street is that Two and a Half Men could be big. With many of the long-running shows--ER, Friends, The West Wing--coming to an end, networks are desparate[sic] to get new shows off the ground. And television, being more accessible, creates seemingly more accessible stars. But Lynskey doesn't appear to have a palpable lust for fame, more a sense that this is her job and she's going to make the best run of it, for as long as she can.

She will have some time off to make films, and she's always keen to work in New Zealand. The girsl[sic] whose dream once extended only as far as Wellington's theatre scene would love to be invited down to do a play (although the thought of being on stage is secretly "terrifying").

Occassionally she puts pen to paper. "I used to write poetry a lot, but I haven't written any for a while because I'm too happy! It's like there's nothing to talk about. My boyfriend is amazing, my dog is beautiful, I"m working."

For now, Melanie Lynskey is relishing being that more satisfying of things--a full-time actor.

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Melanie Lynskey as part of E! Online's "Sizzlin' 16" of 2003

Melanie Lynskey is suffering from a little crisis of confidence.

"If I ever have time off and don't know what's coming up next, I get really nervous and think, Oh well, it's probably over."

We doubt it.

Ever since arriving in the States two years ago, the native New Zealander has been working nonstop. Lynskey played Drew Barrymore's not-so-evil stepsister in Ever After, screamed her way through the Stephen King miniseries Rose Red, creeped out Katie Holmes in Abandon and helped Reese Witherspoon reconnect with her southern roots in Sweet Home Alabama.

While still in high school, Lynskey was plucked from drama class to audition for Peter Jackson's indie feature Heavenly Creatures. She won raves for her performance as a teen who schemes to kill her mother. And while the naturally shy Lynskey enjoyed playing such a dark character, she has selected a variety of roles since.

"I always try to do something really different from the last thing. After Abandon, where I was this creepy girl, I just wanted to play someone happy, and then Sweet Home Alabama came along, which was perfect."

Lynskey currently appears in the indie drama Snakeskin, which follows a free-spirited young woman on a road trip across New Zealand. Next up, she guest stars on The Shield as a seemingly quiet woman involved in some friendly neighborhood torture rituals. And this fall, she costars--alongside former Sizzler Hayden Christensen--in Shattered Glass, as a reporter jealous of her dishonest colleague's success.

But even as her Glass character longs for fame, Lynskey remains grounded. "I always thought I'd be in New Zealand doing theater. Everything I've done is greater than my greatest dreams."
--Rhonda Richford

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Melanie Lynskey: On the Verge
by David Beebe

Memo to Hollywood: Get ready to witness Melanie Lynskeys transition from an up-and-comer to a bona-fide star. The 25-year-old actress is about to pop, big time, like that last kernel in the popper. Ms. Lynskey brings an impressive resume as well, filled with big names, movies, and television credits, plus shes got an accent to die for. To top it all off, shes smart, beautiful, funny, and carries herself as a squared-away normal girl who has a job she truly loves.

Born in New Plymouth, New Zealand, Lynskey always knew she wanted to be an actress and could never imagine herself doing anything else that would make her as happy. In high school she performed in plays and studied acting. She was planning to continue her education at college, then go on to theater, and then work her way up the ladder from there. But, unbeknownst to her, there was a different plan afoot. Realizing every actors dream, Lynskey was hand-picked in high school by Frances Walsh and Peter Jackson to play the lead in Heavenly Creatures. But in spite of giving a critically acclaimed performance, Lynskeys film career didnt get off the ground until three years later, when she re-emerged in the 1998 re-telling of the Cinderella story, Ever After. Since then, shes been working non-stop and has managed to show her wide range of acting skills by taking on completely different roles in every project.

Included among her credits are Detroit Rock City (1999), But Im a Cheerleader (1999), Coyote Ugly (2000), Snakeskin (2001), and Stephen Kings TV mini-series Rose Red (2002). This month, Lynskey can be seen on the big screen again in two completely different parts: in the dramatic thriller Abandon as the mousy library assistant with a secret to tell; and as a good ol country girl in the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama. She also just finished filming Shattered Glass, the true story of fraudulent Washington, D.C. journalist Stephen Glass.

During a well deserved break, Lynskey sat down with Venice Magazine to talk about her career so far, what she thinks about Hollywood, and the best advice shes ever received.

Venice: Congratulations on your role in Sweet Home Alabama. Are you starting to get recognized as that girl in the bar with a baby?
Yeah, I guess. Its happening a lot lately because the trailer has been on television fifty times a day showing me holding a baby in the bar. I feel very awkward when I get recognized. Im not comfortable with it yet.

Have you had interesting run-ins with fans yet?
The funniest thing that happened is when I was in Montreal and this girl came up to me and said, Has anyone ever told you that you look like Melanie Lynskey? She was in so and so movies. Its such a weird experience to be recognized sometimes. Most people think they know you somehow, went to school with you, or that Im a friend of someone they know.

Youre originally from New Zealand. Is the celebrity thing big there?
There really isnt much of a celebrity concept there. People are famous, but no one is really bothered by it. People just live their lives there.

Whats the acting community like there?
I love New Zealand so much but theres nowhere to go as an actor. Theres no sense of working up to something. The most famous actors in New Zealand do movies, television, theater, and commercials. Theres just not enough work to be an established film actor.

Whats been your observation of American actors?
Well, young American actors are very strange. There seems to be a lot of people who have grown up believing or just knowing that they would be acting for a living compared to those that cant believe that theyre actually doing it. I still cant believe that Ive done everything Ive done. People always want to be Jennifer Lopez or superstars. Ive never had a this is where I want to be sort of plan. I just feel lucky every time I work.

What was it like working with Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama?
She amazes me. Between takes when everyone is just sort of hanging around shes always reading a book, talking to her daughter, or on the phone organizing something. Theres not a moment of the day that shes not doing anything. Shes like superwoman.