She’s one of our most successful expat actors, starring in a host of acclaimed TV shows and movies. Melanie Lynskey talks to Alexander Bisley about life in LA, why she hopes her next role is a New Zealand film, body issues and gangsta rap.
In Hollywood, Melanie Lynskey has become known as The Actress Who Can Do Everything.
Since making her startling film debut as a 16-year-old playing a teenage schoolgirl murderer in Heavenly Creatures, the Kiwi actress - who moved to LA shortly afterwards - has built a career on naturalistic, intelligent portrayals of women, working alongside everyone from Girls' Lena Dunham and funnywoman Amy Poehler to George Clooney, Matt Damon and Hugh Laurie.
The 37-year-old has starred in more than 30 movies and a dozen television shows, and has been working consistently for more than a decade in Los Angeles - which is more than impressive in a city where even most American actors wait tables more than they read scripts.
She admits it's a career she could never have dreamt of growing up in New Plymouth, struggling with issues such as bulimia and depression.
Like her Heavenly co-star Kate Winslet, Lynskey has challenged the notion that actresses have to be very thin to succeed. "It's really hard to stay true to yourself and tell yourself that that doesn't matter," she says by phone from her home in LA, where she is currently shooting the second season of her new hit HBO show, Togetherness. "I had a really hard time as a teenager and I can't imagine now with the internet, it'd be crazy. It really helped me once I stopped trying to become something that is physically impossible for me to become."
These days, she ignores the body type in vogue in Hollywood and in fashion magazines. "There are just people whose genetics are so wildly different from mine. It's just culturally beaten into us and it's a real freedom to be able to say, 'No thank you, I don't want to participate', and I started working a lot more when I came to terms with that."
In a scene in the first series of Togetherness, which will rescreen here on Sky in a couple of months, Lynskey's character Michelle appears full-frontal. "We're not showing perfectly manicured porn bodies - people are used to seeing that kind of image of sexuality, especially of the female body," she says. "It feels really exciting to me to be naked and be like: 'Hey, that's what some people look like!' It feels radical."
She feels different from her character, though. "She's unfulfilled in a lot of different ways; she hasn't been able to have the career that she wanted and really explore who she is as a person. I feel so grateful that my whole life has been selfish and I've been allowed to do the work that I want to do and I've had a lot of freedom."
A scene from Togetherness featuring Melanie Lynskey, Amanda Peet, Mark Duplass, Abby Ryder Fortson and Steve Zissis. Photo / Supplied
From Heavenly Creatures to notable lead roles in Hello I Must Be Going and Happy Christmas, Lynskey has relished playing life's grey areas. Togetherness, about two LA couples living in the same house, is familiar, uncomfortable territory. "There's all this weird sort of, unspoken stuff ... parts of life that are the hardest to get to ... When you're having a hard day, or your marriage isn't everything you hoped it would be, you feel unsupported or you had some weird conversation with a friend and you carry it with you throughout the day; that's a really tricky place to be because you have to get on with stuff, but overwhelmed by this other feeling."
Shooting season two is exciting, she says. "It maintains the integrity that the first season had; and the honesty and getting into the little intimate moments in relationships."
Togetherness, Game of Thrones, True Detective, Girls: HBO is where television's at, Lynskey agrees. "Every time I get an invite to the HBO Golden Globes party or whatever it's insane to me that I'm part of this establishment. I can't believe I was invited in."
Is that Taranaki modesty? "No, I think for most actors it's the dream to be on an HBO show. The programming is so consistent, and the way you're allowed to work is creative and you're able to have a voice. It's so special. I'm not putting myself down saying I don't belong here or anything like that."
Lynskey has had her share of big-screen roles too, appearing in more than 30 films over the past two decades. Playing George Clooney's sister on the terrific, Oscar-nominated Up In The Air was memorable. She has much praise for Clooney. "He would go sit in a group of background actors. He was very personable. He knew every crew member; he knew their kids' names. It really sets the tone. If people are comfortable the work is going to be better. Because whether you're a grip, a PA or an actor, if you feel nervous, like you're going to get in trouble any minute, you're not going to do as good a job because your mind is somewhere else."
For her latest romantic comedy, We'll Never Have Paris, based on co-star Simon Helberg's real life engagement, Lynskey escaped LA briefly to film in France. "We were in Paris for a week to do that movie. My [real] boyfriend [actor Jason Ritter] came over, and it was really fun. I've had bad times in Paris as well, but it's lovely. The museums are so great. Everything you eat is delicious."
Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures. Photo / Supplied
LA, she believes, is underrated. "I think people feel - if you're an actor in the film industry - that there's this 'Hollywood' lifestyle. The nice thing about it is it feels like a very easy thing to not participate in; paparazzi and all that kind of thing."
You need to learn how to drive though, I say. "I drive now, thank God. I was coming and going for a while, but then I lived here full-time for four years without driving, which is insanity, particularly going to auditions. It's a lot better now that I know how to drive."
She enjoys the hikes, beaches and views of greater LA; and a supportive group of friends who are "mainly not in the entertainment industry".
Exercise is vital for balance, she says. "The kind of exercise where you go hard and that's all you can think about, there's no room to obsess about anything or worry, you're just in your body."
Such exercise counters Lynskey's tendency towards depression. "It's easy for me to feel anxious and down and a thing I've found that really helps me is exercising really consistently. I do boxing and I go to spin class and I do super-heavy weightlifting. I love taking walks and things like that too, but your mind can really wander and it's more meditative and I really like the feeling of just being in your body and feeling all your muscles working and sweating and just feeling so physical. There's also something about it that makes me feel inherently grateful that I'm able to move, that I have my mobility and my physicality. It's a good way to not get too obsessive in your thinking. The endorphins and all that stuff really help you."
She also unwinds listening to gangsta rap. "I think it's the purest form of poetry that's available right now. And it makes me so mad when people dismiss it. When people say, 'Oh, they just talk about hoes or money or whatever'. You're not listening to the right people. It's really insightful about so many things, about our culture and the world. Biggie's my all-time favourite. But I've recently been listening to that new Kendrick Lamar [album] a lot and it's a crazy masterpiece."
Twenty-one years on, the brilliant Heavenly Creatures, with its uncommonly unsettling ending, remains very personal for Lynskey.
"It's really surprising and heartwarming to me how many people still come up to me and say things about the movie and still remember it so intensely and so vividly," she says.
Melanie Lynskey and Dean Gorman in a scene from Snakeskin - set in NZ's South Island. Photo / Supplied
Director Peter Jackson taught her how to go to a dark, honest part of herself in her role as the quiet, brooding teenager Pauline Parker who, with her friend Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), murders her mother. "It's easy to be angry, it's easy to show lots of emotion. But to really, really get to a part of yourself that you don't really want to show people is a very vulnerable place to be in. It requires some digging and pushing, because everybody has defences. I was so lucky that my first ever professional job was with somebody who knew how to look for that hidden part and bring it out. Now that's something I can't not do. I know when I'm faking it."
There were many emotional times during the making of the film - based on the true story of the 1954 Christchurch teenage schoolgirl murder that shocked New Zealand - and Lynskey feels like she gave the role everything. "[But Peter Jackson] was able to get inside and ask for something more. Ask for a little specific nasty thing or an angry thing or a selfish thing to put on top of it that made it a million times more interesting."
She occasionally thinks about the two now-elderly women Heavenly Creatures is based on. Hulme is now an acclaimed author of historical detective novels and lives in a secluded Scottish village under the name Anne Perry. It is believed Parker also lives somewhere in Britain. "I hope for them that they're able to have their privacy, which I know is probably a weird thing for me to say. But it's such a long time ago and I think especially Pauline [Parker] is a very private person and I just would hope that she's able to have some peace."
Lynskey still yearns to be involved in New Zealand stories on the bigger screens. "At university I got super into Emily Perkins and I was like, 'Oh God, she's really writing about this experience that I'm having in my life right now', really resonating in such a personal way. I would really love to be a part of something like that even though people might think I'm a fraud because I don't live there anymore ... People are like 'Oh, well you don't want to come back to New Zealand and work,' and I'm like, 'People don't ask me!' Anthony McCarten was the first person in so many years to ask me to come back and do a movie [2008's Show of Hands, in which she played solo mother Jess trying to win a car in an endurance contest]."
She'd love to be part of any future New Zealand films made by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. "They're just so overflowing with ideas and creativity, I'm sure it won't be long. He's such an amazing film-maker, the more work I do, the more incredible it is for me to look back at that time and realise how special he is as a director. He can make something that is epic but is so personal. He can really marry those action and indie sensibilities and that's why he's so successful. I would so love to work with him again."
Melanie Lynskey in Show of Hands. Photo / Supplied
Despite being away from home for more than a decade (she lived in London briefly before moving to LA), Lynskey admits she still misses New Zealand. "I miss my family and I miss my friends so much. There's something when you arrive back in Auckland and you get off the plane ... there's this light that's so different, there's this clarity and, even though you're at the airport, there's this kind of earthy smell and a comforting feeling like I'm home."
We'll Never Have Paris is out on DVD and Blu Ray now. Togetherness series one will rescreen on Sky's Neon channel soon.
