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Kiwi actress's whirlwind homecoming
28 July 2001
By Martin Kay

It's been a tough couple of weeks for Kiwi actress Melanie Lynskey, but she still found time for a smile and a chat with a trio of schoolgirls who stumbled across her in Cuba Mall yesterday.

Lynskey, in Wellington for the city's premiere of her latest New Zealand film, Snakeskin, at the Embassy Theatre, was reflecting on the whirlwind of interviews and appearances that has marked her visit when the girls shyly approached.

"You were in Coyote Ugly, eh?", said one.

"Yes I was", said Lynskey.

Lynskey, who made her name in Heavenly Creatures, by Wellington director Peter Jackson, and has since starred in several New Zealand and American films, has been in hot demand.

In a 2-1/2-day stint in Auckland she did 36 interviews and was more than a bit jaded yesterday. She's heard all the questions before, though she's thrown when asked, in a desperate bid for originality, who her favourite All Black is.

"I haven't been asked that before," she admits. "I wouldn't even know - I don't know who any of them are."

On more familiar ground, Lynskey, 24, mused that though life in Los Angeles was okay, in her heart of hearts she wanted to live in Wellington.

But the problem is, though it's her "favourite city in the world", there's not enough work here to keep her going.

Sure, the film industry is booming, "but you can't be in everything that's made".

Being a Hollywood star's not all it's cracked up to be. In fact, Lynskey cringes at the term.

"I don't think I'll ever be a movie star," she said. She just wants to make movies and visit her parents in New Plymouth before returning home - for a holiday.

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She's not earning millions but she's happy in her film work
24 July 2001
By Rochelle Warrander

Thirty-odd media interviews in less than a week--Hollywood-based actress Melanie Lynskey is flat out and loving it.

Home in New Plymouth for just a day before tearing down to Christchurch and then up to Wellington for even more media engagements and film festival screenings of her latest movie, Snakeskin, Lynskey said her life was busy, but she was not complaining.

"Doing so many interviews does get really tiring, your voice gets tired," said Los Angeles-based Lynskey (24), who was packing in as many interviews as possible during her trip back to New Zealand to promote Snakeskin.

The New Zealand premiere of the Gillian Ashurst-written and directed movie - filmed in the South Island - was in Auckland last Friday night, followed by a star-studded premiere party.

Lynskey got back to her hotel about 6.30am on Saturday, ready for Women's Day and Pavement magazine photo shoots and interviews that morning. Those stories are due out in October to coincide with the national release of Snakeskin.

"I think it's a great movie. It's very energetic. It's one of my favourites, if not the favourite movie I have done.

"It was wild, crazy and really fun to be in," she said.

In Snakeskin, Lynskey plays a young woman named Alice on a road trip with her best friend. She plays alongside Kiwis Dean O'Gorman, Oliver Driver, Jodie Rimmer and American Boyd Kestner (GI Jane and The General's Daughter).

"I really believe in this film. I want it to do so well because it deserves to. I'm just so happy with it. It's such an interesting story," she said.

Lynskey's hectic schedule has also included the filming of Abandon, starring Julia Roberts' recently dumped ex Benjamin Bratt, and Stephen King's latest three-part television thriller, Rose Red.

Since starring opposite Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures and in Ever After with Drew Barrymore, Lynskey has had roles in 10 or 11 movies - she had lost count.

Following the New Zealand promotions of Snakeskin, Lynskey hopes to take a bit of a break, taking advantage of a quiet patch in Hollywood during uncertainty over a proposed Screen Actors' Guild strike.

But being able to take time off work does not mean Lynskey is making the big movie bucks.

Some independent movies paid as little as $US3000 for the entire filming, which left little after Lynskey paid $US900 a month in rent for her one-bedroom Hollywood apartment.

"I'm comfortable and obviously I'm doing fine.

"But it's funny because people keep asking my family 'Does she send money back when she gets a million dollars for a film'? They obviously have to say no."

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Melanie Lynskey comes out from the shadows
21 July 2001
By Michelle Hewitson

Melanie Lynskey, New Plymouth girl turned Los Angeles-based actor, is sitting in an Auckland hotel room doing impersonations of Melanie Lynskey.

She is also, the 24 year-old says with the naivete of youth, nursing the "worst hangover in the world."

Only the very young can look like Lynskey does - fresh-faced, bright-eyed - after a night on the town. Only the very young have the courage to face a camera lens the morning after sans makeup.

Not too many actors, however young, would own up to a night on the other end of a couple of wine bottles. You're more likely to have them tell you, while they sip at a bottle of water, that they were in the gym at 6 am.

Lynskey's a good actor but not much of a pretender. She's wearing old jeans and trainers, a cowboy shirt. The only trapping of a Hollywood lifestyle is a terrifically kitsch bag - it features a kitten in a patch of beaded daisies - from the terrifically expensive Bloomingdales.

Lynskey is that rare thing: the budding celebrity who says honest things. She'll tell you, for example, that she played "a very boring character" in a Stephen King mini-series because it was "good for my career ... but it was like sleepwalking through it."

She is home to promote her new film, Snakeskin, the Gillian Ashurst-directed "supernatural road movie" which premiered in Auckland last night and is due for a general release in October.

It's her first major role in a New Zealand film (she had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in The Frighteners) since Peter Jackson's heavenly Heavenly Creatures in 1994. She was 15 then, a schoolgirl with dreams of becoming an actor.

"Be careful what you wish for," says the Snakeskin character Seth, a walking Marlboro Man who is as dangerous to the health as a lifetime of filter tips.

What Lynskey wished for were the bast parts. Here's Lynskey, at the age of six, when her family were living in London. She's playing herself losing out on the part of Mary in the nativity play to another girl. A haughty Lynskey to teacher: "Can you explain to me why I didn't get this role? Is it the accent? I can do the English accent. Is it because she's blonde?" Lynskey can still remember the blonde's name: Wendy.

When she grew up and went to Hollywood for the first time aged 18, she found herself surrounded by "Wendys."

She was over-overwhelmed by a self-consciousness fed by a diet of auditions. "The whole culture was bewildering. Meeting all these girls ... I'd never seen anyone that skinny. I didn't fit in. I felt so awkward." Directors would say to her "You were really amazing in that film [Heavenly Creatures]." And she'd say, "Oh, no, I wasn't really. You don't have to say that."

They stopped saying it. Lynskey stopped eating, stopped going to auditions, "went a bit crazy." And came home. She "moved in with my boyfriend, went on the dole, got even fatter. It was awful."

The breakthrough came when she auditioned for a never-made Gaylene Preston film, Ophelia.

When Gaylene asked the young actor why she was just going through the motions, Lynskey "just broke down crying." She gives a good repeat performance: "I've had this awful time. I was in LA ... and now I'm on the dole and live with my boyfriend and I hate him."

Preston advised her to go away and change everything she had to change. She did a play, took voice lessons, "went on a diet." And said bye-bye boyfriend?

"I'm afraid I did," she laughs. "It wasn't his fault. Gaylene Preston ruined my relationship." But she is serious when she says, "I don't even know if she realises how much she did for me."

For years interviews with Lynskey - when she was interviewed at all - would mention that she grew up in the shadow of Mt. Taranaki and grew up as an actor in the shadow of Heavenly Creatures co-star Kate Winslet.

Lynskey would turn, in terrified fascination, to the "whatever happened to ... ?" stories in magazines.

She thinks she's done enough now to halt the Winslet career comparison. She was Drew Barrymore's nice stepsister in Ever After, starred with Charlotte Rampling and Alan Bates in an adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard; played a New Jersey girl in Coyote Ugly (she couldn't resist the combination of the accent, "big hair and fake nails").

In Snakeskin, she is Alice, a girl from small-town NZ who, as Lynskey puts it, "chooses a persona for herself as a way of trying to escape." Alice wants an adventure in Wonderland: "I wished so much that my life could be one of those Hollywood movies - an adventure around every corner." It's a tongue-in-cheek trip with plenty of drugs, violence and allusions to other stories.

Lynskey is great in it. She spends the film, shot in Canterbury, sporting a teensy-weensy skirt, and ample cleavage. Alice is all bravado; playing at being sexy. Lynskey knew girls like Alice at school. Those who were never going to be the "cool girl at school;" those who revelled in a parallel fantasy world. "I was kind of like that."

What she is now is an ambitious young actor in a town where that makes you a cliche.

But you couldn't say she lives the cliched life, at least not yet. For one thing this actor in a road movie can't drive. In LA that makes it just her and street people who walk places. Tell people you walked to a meeting and it has as much impact as saying, "Hey, I just shot up heroin on the way here."

She lives in an apartment complex where her neighbours are all Texans, all related. They get in a keg, hang fairy lights and have huge parties. When she went in search of an apartment "they were all sitting outside drinking beer. And I was, like, do none of them have jobs? I like that."

Well, she likes it in the neighbours.

In a few years, if burning ambition has anything to do with it, a Lynskey interview will quite likely be something altogether different.

You'll get the standard celebrity interview: the minders will be lurking, the questions, and the answers, prescribed. Or maybe not. Being Lynskey might still mean turning up for interviews with no makeup and no pretensions. Now that would be the stuff of Wonderland.

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Dream role for actress in NZ-made road movie
8 January 2001
By Lyn Humphreys

Actress Melanie Lynskey got her big break in Hollywood with the movie Coyote Ugly - but it's a new Kiwi-made movie that has got her buzzing.

She classes the supernatural road movie Snakeskin as her most exciting role to date.

Lynskey, veteran of 10 movies, came home from her base in Los Angeles last year to take the lead role in the film she is raving about.

"It's very, very cool. I haven't seen it yet but it felt wonderful when we were making it," she said during her Christmas-New Year holiday at her family's New Plymouth home. "There was a really good buzz about it."

Snakeskin was filmed in the South Island and written and produced by Gillian Ashurst.

"She's absolutely brilliant and it was just so great to be working at home again," she said.

The movie would now foot it with the best in international festivals this year, she said.

"I think it's going to be great. It's a good time for New Zealand film at the moment."

Her character could have been made for her.

"When I read the role, it was as though I had explained my dream role to somebody and they wrote it. It was amazing. Then when they wanted me to do it, it was the most exciting thing that's ever happened."

She plays alongside Kiwis Dean O'Gorman (of Shortland Street fame), Oliver Driver, Jodie Rimmer and American Boyd Kestner (GI Jane and The General's Daughter).

"There are lots of twists. I play a girl from a small town (Ashburton) who's obsessed with America and we go on this adventure and we find more excitement than we bargained for. All sorts of crazy things happen."

The box office has been kind financially since her career took off with Heavenly Creatures at the end of 1994.

"If you do a little independent movie you don't get paid very much. They're always my favourites because they are more fulfilling creatively. When you do something like Coyote Ugly, which is fun, you get better money."

Lynskey is rapt to be home for a break after working exceptionally long hours for four months on horror guru Stephen King's latest television thriller, Rose Red, a three-part series.

"It's about a creepy old haunted house that eats people alive. It has all these Stephen King characters.

"I actually have the most boring part in the whole thing. Normally I play character parts with funny accents.

"(In Rose Red) I'm the girl who's afraid for everyone, who runs around saying, 'Oh, My God what's happening?' (in her best American accent).

"When they offered me the part I said, 'Oh yeah!' I've never been the girl, I've always been the girl's best friend.

"But I don't know if I want to be again, because it's not so much fun.

"You don't get to act so much, and you just have to be nice and sweet and everyone worries about you looking pretty all the time, and I've never had to worry about that before."

Her typical working day started when she was picked up at 5.20am, then it was makeup for 1-1/2 hours 13 to 14 hours on the set, and then home to crash.

"You do get tired. Having to have your emotions on hold all the time is very tiring. Spending 12 hours on the verge of tears is tiring. I was always worried."

The money is good, and she is now calling Los Angeles home.

"I look forward to going back.

Initially, it was awful. I almost had a nervous breakdown. At 18, I was too young. I wasn't ready for it. I've now got an apartment. Everyone's booked up to visit for the next two years."

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Melanie goes to Hollywood
Creme, December 2000

Melanie Lynskey's acting career began as a young teenager with humble beginnings. In the sleepy seaside town of New Plymouth she acted, with no formal training, in local theatre groups. Now at 23, Melanie is based in LA acting alongside big names in equally big budget Hollywood films, such as the new chick flick Coyote Ugly. Bridget Hope talks to the softly-spoken Melanie (or Mel to her friends) about her road to success in the cut-throat Hollywood film industry.

It's at the end of a long day for Melanie. She is currently in Seattle working on a Stephen King mini series that will keep her there until Christmas and whilst she is currently working in Seattle, auditions for movie roles sees her commuting back and forth to LA where she has her own apartment. Down the end of the phone line you can barely hear Melanie because of her quiet mouse-like voice. She speaks slowly and with such sincerity that it seems hard to believe that this sweet young woman ever made the jump overseas in the first place.

"All I ever wanted was to be an actress" she says, "But I always imagined my career would be living in Wellington and doing theatre. At the time that seemed like a big career to me."

Melanie's first professional acting role came when she was just 15 years old in the form of the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures, a New Zealand film set in Christchurch about a wayward teenager whom, with the help of another girl (played by Kate Winslet) brutally kills her mother. Based on a true story, the film was set in Christchurch where the actual murder occurred. Melanie received a New Zealand Film and Television Award for Best Actress for her performance, but at the time had no idea of just how much the film would launch her acting career. She remembers : "I remember Kate [Winslet] would talk during filming about how good it would be for our careers and I was like...career? What career?" laughs Melanie.

"Kate had already been acting professionally since she was a toddler but I was just beginning. I knew that it would be a good film because the script was so amazing but it was such a shock when it came out and so many people saw it."

Once the media buzz had died down from Heavenly Creatures, Melanie went back to New Plymouth and returned to normal teenage life, attending high school at New Plymouth Girls High. She then went on to university studying sporadically for eighteen months. It was at this point that Melanie started getting itchy feet.

"It had never occurred to me to go to LA or London or any of those places" says Mel, "But I eventually got agents overseas and I was a bit depressed being at home (New Plymouth). Then this movie came out of the blue. It was this little independent movie called Foreign Correspondents and I went to LA to do that. Whilst I was there I auditioned for Ever After and have just been in the US ever since."

In the 1998 big budget Hollywood flick Ever After, Melanie played the supporting role of one of the two "ugly" sisters. She worked alongside Drew Barrymore who played Cinderella and Angelica Huston who was cast as the evil stepmother. For Melanie it was a monumental experience working with such big names.

"Drew is SO amazing" gushes Melanie.

Melanie has slowly been working away on films all over the world since then, although most of her work keeps her in LA. Asked if there is anything about the Hollywood scene that drives her up the wall, she replies, "There are hundreds of things. The biggest would be the pressure of it all. No matter how much time you spend trying to make yourself feel good, it's hard to walk into a room of skinny little things for an audition who spend their whole lives starving themselves. It's hard not to think that you should have to look like that too."

However, over the course of time, Melanie's distinctive look has meant that she has been able to carve out a niche for herself in the industry.

"If you work it out properly then you can get to an interesting place in your career where you are never typecast and are never too famous, so you can just keep working" she says.

"I managed to do this by not conforming to any ideals. Like in this current mini series, I'm playing the pretty girl. A couple of years ago they would have never seen me [to audition] for this part."

And in the land of the stars, Melanie's competition for acting roles is often pretty stiff.

"The last role that I came second for was this massive Adam Sandler movie that took them three weeks to decide. In the end Patricia Arquette got the role. Another movie Cameron Diaz got. It was a Martin Scorsese film with Leonardo DiCaprio. There's just nothing you can do about that."

Although Melanie is now used to auditioning and working on big budget Hollywood films, she prefers the smaller independent films.

"I prefer the little films because people are there for the right reasons" Melanie says. "They are there because they love the project as opposed to making money. In New Zealand people are just different anyway. In America there are always stars. There are star actors, star directors, star producers. People do tend to get carried away sometimes."

Snakeskin, directed by Gillian Ashurst, saw Melanie spend the first part of this year in New Zealand. Luckily for Melanie, even though she has been living overseas for over fours years now, New Zealand is still very much home to her. She explains, "People have this idea that once you leave to go overseas you never want to go back, but I can't wait to come back. I'm only in LA because I have to be. I'm desperate for roles in New Zealand" she pines. Her wish was granted earlier this year when she returned to New Zealand to play the lead in Snakeskin, her favourite acting role to date.

"It's probably the one film that I have had the most freedom with" she says. "The character was very similar to my own and it made it fun to do. It's a movie about a girl called Alice who's just crazy and wild. She goes out on the road with her best friend Johnny who's played by Dean O'Gorman. They pick up this American hitchhiker called Seth and realise that where they come from is just as mixed up and dark and exciting as America is," she tells us.

The producers of Snakeskin are planning to screen the film at a myriad of international film festivals in the bid to get an American distributor for world wide audiences.

Melanie's most recent film to hit the cinemas, Coyote Ugly is a flashy chick flick about a girl named Violet who travels to New York in pursuit of a career in song writing. Melanie plays the role of Violet's best friend from New Jersey, Gloria. Although the film has only recently been launched in New Zealand, Melanie tells us it was filmed this time last year.

"It took forever to finish though" she says. "The other girls were continually being asked to come back for reshoots. Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) is a total perfectionist and would test scenes out on audiences. And if his audiences wanted to see more of the bar then he would start up production and reshoot it all over again."

Asked what it was like for her having to work with a whole bunch of supermodels, she replies, "It was intimidating but I didn't have many scenes with all those girls. I was with Piper the whole time and I adore her. But Adam Garcia..." she sighs.

"Oh my God... He's so spunky. I can't believe how sexy that man is. It was so much fun to hang out with him and Piper. I didn't spend a lot of time with the other girls but they were all really nice and appeared to be eating all the time too. They would be eating great big steaks" she laughs.

In preparation for her supporting role in Coyote Ugly, Melanie had to learn a coarse New Jersey accent.

"Initially they wouldn't see me for the part because they didn't believe that I could do the accent" she says.

But a headstrong Melanie was determined to prove herself going to extra lengths to secure the role.

"I got a dialect coach and a whole lot of videos out like Married to the Mob and then did an audition on videotape, sent it to them and they changed their minds" she says triumphantly.

Since then Melanie has worked in a number of projects, making 2000 a busy working year for the budding young actress. And although she is a seasoned movie-premiere and Hollywood party-goer, the advice she offers for teens wanting to get into acting is as humble and sincere as the girl herself.

"Believe that it's possible" she encourages. "New Zealander's tend to be a bit down on themselves. You just need to look at some of the rubbish that comes out of America like films and crappy bands, and see there's a high percentage of good stuff coming out of New Zealand. You just have to believe that you can take it overseas and be successful. That was the one thing that initially stopped me. I just used to be afraid."

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Cleo magazine
July 2000
By Leanne Moore

Hollywood's home now for Taranaki-born actor Melanie Lynskey, but five years after leaving New Zealand to forge an international career she's returned to her grass roots to star in the movie Snakeskin.

Melanie Lynskey can be as slippery as a snake when it comes to pinning her down for an interview. It's not that Melanie, who shot to fame in Heavenly Creatures with Kate Winslet, doesn't want to talk. She does. Lots. It's just that she's in the middle of a punishing shooting schedule for her latest movie, Snakeskin. The final scenes are being shot at night and filming doesn't finish until daybreak. After all night on set, Melanie snoozes until around 3pm, then it's right back to work. After four aborted attempts at catching up with the Los Angeles-based actor, I finally hook up with her during a break in filming in the South Island. Munching mouthfuls of pretzels and sipping chardonnay, the 22-year-old chats about what it's like rubbing shoulders with Hollywood stars, Drew Barrymore's sensational parties, and how her family and friends in New Zealand keep her grounded.

You've described Snakeskin as the best script you've read since Heavenly Creatures--what made it stand out?
The fact that it was so completely original. There were some plot twists that caught me completely by surprise. I kept thinking, 'What can they do? Where can they take it from here?' The way it unfolded was unlike anything I had read. The character Alice, who I'm playing, was just so strong and sexy and cool. I thought, 'I'm desperate to do this.' It was a real instinctive reaction.

In Snakeskin you're working alongside two of New Zealand's hunkiest actors, Taika Cohen from from Scarfies and Dean O'Gorman from Young Hercules. What's that like?
Taika Cohen is a spunk. He's just the cutest. In fact, everyone wants to have sex with Taika. Even boys look at him and say 'Oh, he's so cute'. With Dean, I have a brother-sister relationship--actually, I have a brother-sister relationship with both of them.(Much laughter)

What do you like about working here?
I have always wanted to come back here to work. There's nothing like being at home and being around people who have grown up the same way as you. Being in the place you are meant to be means there's more of a family feeling to film-making here. I have done every kind of movie--British low budget, American low budget, European art house, Hollywood studio. They are all such different ways of working. I really prefer low-budget movies because people are not just in it for the money. They put their heart and soul into it. It can be that way on a studio film, too, but sometimes you get the sense of people gritting their teeth and thinking about their bank account to get through it.

You've been based in London and Los Angeles recently--are you a bit like a rolling stone at the moment?
I've been living in London for the past couple of years. My ex-boyfriend bought a house in Shoreditch (a semi-industrial area popular with writers and artists). We moved there because it was cheap and near a tube station and it just got trendier and trendier. I really, really miss all the cafes around there. It had a really artistic vibe to it. But to be honest, I feel most at home in Wellington. If I could live anywhere in the world, it would have to be there, but there's just not enough work. I'm sort of homeless at the moment. All my stuff is in three suitcases in my agent's garage in LA. But I do need to buy my own place because I'm obsessively buying cushion covers and anything I can fit in a suitcase. I need to make a home and I need to buy a big sofa and put it somewhere. I looked at a few apartments just before I came here.

Why the move to LA?
I've decided that's where I have to be at the moment. There's just so much going on. Even now my agent is calling me every day to let me know what's happening back there. Anywhere else in the world you sit around waiting, but when you're in LA you go out on castings every day. You can keep yourself occupied. It's hard to sit around waiting. At those times I think, 'How can I call myself an actor?' You tend to question yourself all the time when you're not working, and it's nice to be too busy to worry.

What's your favourite travel destination?
I have never been anywhere for a holiday, but I have gone to a lot of different places around the world for work. I have been so lucky to be paid to see all these places. I went to the south of France for Ever After and it was like a holiday. They rented us a big house with a swimming pool and it had gorgeous views. One of the scariest places I have been to was Bulgaria. I did a movie version of the Chekov play The Cherry Orchard, a European art-house movie where I spent three months in this tight corset. My whole body changed shape.

If you settle down, where do you see yourself living?
I have to live in LA at the moment because of work. But I have this dream of having a nice house in Wellington by the water and having a place in LA out by the beach so that I can look across the Pacific and think, 'Everyone I love is just across the water'.

Did you have a chance to become friends with Drew Barrymore on the set of Ever After, or was it just a working relationship?
We became friends. I still see her and she has the best parties of anyone I know. She has just got a really big heart and she loves fun and she knows how to make people have fun. She has this great place in a canyon in LA which is a whole bunch of little houses on this property. When she has a party she strings up fairy lights and has this one hut which is just a bar and she has one room where people can do paintings. It's great fun and a lovely feeling being around her. She has the warmest energy of anyone I have ever met.

Angelica Huston is like acting royalty. What was she like to work with in Ever After?
She is amazing. She is my ideal of what I would like to be like. She is well educated, has read everything, she is funny and beautiful. She is wise but she is not an old lady; she is a young spirit.

Heavenly Creatures gave you and Kate Winslet your big break--have the two of you kept in touch?
We kind of have. It's interesting how our paths have entwined. We were both at very formative times of our lives when we met. We had an amazing connection in that film, which we will always have when we see each other. She is like a sister to me and I see her sometimes, but she is married and having a baby and doing all these grown up things.

How is your love life? Is there anyone special at the moment?
I have been living with someone for the past couple of years, but I'm based in LA now and he's still in London. We both sort of need to know where we are at before anything happens. It's really difficult moving around all the time and trying to have a relationship.

Are you close to your family?
Yes. I come from quite a big family, three brothers and one sister. They are all younger than me. They are an anchor for me. I'm close to my parents and I would like it if they were with me. I think my best friend is going to come and live with me in LA. We've been friends since we met at drama class when we were 11. He plans to go to LA and work in a bar to see what it's like. That's the hardest thing about being away. I have a lot of close friends overseas but when you have grown up with someone it's a whole other thing. They were there the first time you got drunk and they know everything about you.

What's the most important goal in your life?
To feel like I have never cheated myself. To be true to what I want to do. It sounds like a selfish goal but I think if you have dreams you should do everything you can to make them happen. I would hate it if I ever got to the end of my life and looked back and felt I had been too scared to go after my dreams. I don't have any materialistic goals. I just want to be fulfilled.

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An L.A. Story
Sunday Star-Times, 15 April 2000
By Lynda Herrick

Melanie Lynskey took years to leave her plump schoolgirl image behind. But, as she tells Lynda Herrick, Hollywood caught up with her just as she was finding herself.

Actor Dean O'Gorman is urging Melanie Lynskey to cut short the interview and come out for dinner. She'll go along for the company-- "but I won't be eating. I've got a scene in my underwear tomorrow". It's a far cry from the days when Lynskey, 22, made her glowering 1993 screen debut in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, about the Parker-Hulme murder in Christchurch. That was when the New Plymouth schoolgirl tasted the poisonous chalice of the critics.

"Some of the reviews of Heavenly Creatures said wonderful things about my performance, but it's hard to be a teenage girl and read yourself being described as plump and dumpy," says Lynskey, who is working in Methven with O'Gorman on a feature film called Snakeskin-- her first work in New Zealand since the Jackson project. With six films due for release over the next year, including Snakeskin, Lynskey's career is getting busy. But it hasn't been as easy or spectacular as the rise to superstardom of her Heavenly Creatures co-star Kate Winslet, via a voyage on Titanic. Too soon after making Heavenly Creatures, Lynskey--who was discovered by Jackson's partner Fran Walsh-- moved prematurely to Tinseltown armed with that single much-acclaimed body of work, but no self-esteem.

"When I went to LA that first time I had no confidence, it was crazy, like jumping into the fire."After six weeks and some humiliating auditionsalongside "leathery waif" wannabes, she fled back home and studied film and theatre for 18 months at Victoria University, while pondering the prospect of one-hit-wonder oblivion. Then film-maker Gaylene Preston advised her that if she wanted to get into films, "make yourself strong"and Lynskey's attitude began to evolve-- as did her figure.

"The most important thing anyone can do if they're going to be an actor is take time out and decide whether you're strong enough within yourself to cope with all that rejection and scrutiny," she says. "You need to think about who you are. Acting is using things from within yourself to create a character and if there's not enough in yourself, you can't do it." It's helped that Hollywood is moving beyond bimbo stereotype, thanks to the commercial opportunities of a burgeoning indie film industry and the success of unconventional looking actresses such as Christina Ricci and Drew Barrymore, who Lynskey worked with on the Cinderella remake Ever After.

"There's been a real change in Hollywood," she explains. "I go up for romantic leads all the time now. They are more open to interesting looking people and more open to what qualities people can bring rather than having stereotypical skinny blonde things. I always think people like someone they can relate to."

Her most mainstream project so far is Coyote Ugly (out in August), a film by Hollywood blockbuster kind Jerry Bruckheimer of Flashdance, Top Gun, The Rock, Con air and Armageddon fame-- none of them exactly bastions of the feminist cause. But Coyote Ugly, explains Lynskey, is a "chick flick" set in a raunchy New York bar. One of its big strengths is that it's written by Kevin Smith, who made the hugely controversial Dogma (as well as Clerks and Mallrats). It's also a plus that it stars the incomparable John Goodman (The Big Lebowski).

There's more Hollywood chick-flick fodder for Lynskey in But I'm a Cheerleader, with Natasha Lyonne (American Pie), and she enters the strange world of obsessive KISS fandom in Detroit Rock City, with Edward Furlong (Terminator 2).

Last year she worked in Bulgaria in a remake of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, with Charlotte Rampling and Alan Bates and has just completed Shooters, set for first screenings at the London film Festival later in the year. It's a London gangland film in which Lynskey plays a tough young woman married to a coke fiend intent on "just one last job". It seems Lynskey likes "tough and sexy". In Snakeskin, a twisted road movie written and directed by first-timer Gillian Ashurst, she plays a wild young woman called Alice who is "really sexy".

"Not overtly sexy, but one of those people who has incredible energy. She looks like she's been up all night doing bad things and still wakes up looking gorgeous," she sighs enviously. Lynskey has been based in London for the past couple of years, but when she leaves New Zealand at the end of May, she'll make her home once more in Los Angeles, where she has three suitcases stored in her agent's garage.

The Lynskey buzz is growing, she says. "If you have work in the can which hasn't been released but people are talking about positively, like Coyote Ugly, your currency increases-- which sounds nasty and it is nasty.You get to go up for different kinds of movies and you cross your fingers someone will give you that big break." Dinner with Anjelica Huston, parties with Drew Barrymore, auditions and movies in Europe, London, New York, Hollywood-- and Methven: there must be times when Lynskey ("just call me Mel") must pinch herself? "It's strange, it's bizarre, it's like living in a parallel universe," she says. But she'll never forget how it started, when Fran Walsh scoured the land looking for "a sullen, brooding schoolgirl"-- and found Lynskey two weeks before shooting started.

"When Fran found me it was one of those weird things when you have to believe it is your destiny, that it was meant to happen, because it was so random and strange," reflects Lynskey, adding that her family in New Plymouth are all "a bit over it now". And what of her Heavenly Creatures co-star, Kate Winslet, who got her first film job on that movie as well? They got together for dinner last year with Jackson and Walsh, and Winslet, laughs Lynskey, "is an old married woman now!"

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Movieline magazine
May 1999
By Stephen Rebello

Kate Winslet's name first pops to mind at the mention of Peter Jackson's 1994 stunner, Heavenly Creatures. But that cult classic about a pair of killer adolescents also marked an indelible screen bow for Melanie Lynskey, a then 16 year-old New Zealand high schooler chosen over 600 other contenders.

"Making that movie, working with brilliant Peter and amazing Kate, were like gifts from God," says Lynskey, today a captivating, petite 21 year-old with a winning Down Under twang. What Lynskey found out, though, was that even heavenly gifts exact a price.

"Right after the wonderful attention for Heavenly, I spent three long months in Hollywood auditioning with skinny, gorgeous, terrifying girls. Casting directors would look me over, sigh and say, 'You were so good in that movie, but I don't know what else to do with you.' I then got fixated on how I looked, whether I was thin enough or my face was too wide. It was awful."

After missing out on such hoped-for projects as The Crucible, Scream and Cousin Bette, Lynskey returned to New Zealand, and to a new variety of doubt: "Acting was all that I'd ever wanted to do, but after an amazing director for whom I was auditioning told me, 'I'm getting nothing from you. Something's destroyed you,' I broke down crying, saying, 'I've just had the worst time in Hollywood.' She advised me, 'Go away for 3 months and reclaim yourself.' "

So that's what Lynskey did, mixing practical strategies like voice lessons and a healthier diet with soul-searching.

Lynskey then came back to Hollywood, and after playing Drew Barrymore's un-wicked step-sister in the revisionist fairytale Ever After: A Cinderella Story, she got her footing. She'll next turn up opposite Edward Furlong in the comic road adventure Detroit Rock City, in which she plays a Cleveland girl who does the nasty in a church confessional en route to a big, climatic KISS reunion show.

"That scene won't dispel the fears of my grandmother who says, 'The movies have changed you, Melanie.' But it's more of a teen movie than a KISS movie. When I got cast, I called my best friend saying, 'I'm doing a movie about KISS, those guys with their tongues out, but I don't think I even want to know their music.' It turns out that I knew their music, I just hadn't put it together with those costumes and that make-up."

With her career nicely heated up, Lynskey has chosen to live in London with her Welsh actor boyfriend, Andrew Howard, whom she met while both were filming a movie version of The Cherry Orchard.

"Some actors only like doing what they know they're good at, but not me," she concludes. "I want to be like Julianne Moore and get to do things that scare me - and keep on doing them until I'm very old."

---

Pavement magazine
Issue 32, Dec '98 / Jan '99
By Michelle Cruickshank

It isn't really a rags-to-riches story. However, Melanie Lynskey's move from starring in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures to working opposite Drew Barrymore in the big budget Hollywood movie Ever After is a story well worth hearing.

Living under the shadow of imposing famous icons seems to be a habit for Melanie Lynskey. The softly spoken actress, who catapulted onto our screens and into our consciousness with her stunning portrayal of a 1950s schoolgirl murderess in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, grew up with the majestic figure of New Plymouth's Mt Taranaki as a backdrop to her childhood. These days, it's a man-made structure that frames her environment. Several stories tall, it spells out a metaphor for the unbridled dreams and shattered illusions of many Americans--HOLLYWOOD.

Until recently, Lynskey has also been living in the shadow of her first ever co-star, the Oscar-nominated British darling of Hollywood, Kate Winslet, who played Lynskey's partner in crime in Jackson's internationally acclaimed film. But, while the 20-year-old is content being dwarfed by her surroundings, she's finally starting to make some serious headway establishing her own career as an in-demand actress. In fact, it seems that it may not be long before the shadow cast by her own career is as imposing and impressive as those of her successful peers in Hollywood.

Despite a worrisome lull of a couple of years after the making of Heavenly Creatures, over the past two years Lynskey has won roles in no less than five films, all due to be released within the next 12 months. These roles will finally prove to the film studios, the public at large and Lynskey herself that what was essentially her lucky break with Heavenly Creatures wasn't just a one-off piece of propitious casting. Of course, the highest profile film in this cavalcade of new roles is undoubtedly Ever After, a modern take on the Cinderella story starring non other than Drew Barrymore and Anjelica Huston and filmed in the south of France. Lynskey plays a somewhat mutated evil stepsister. "I was the nice stepsister," she explains over the phone from Los Angeles, where she's flatting in the Hollywood Hills, just beneath the infamous HOLLYWOOD sign. "It's the whole twist of the role. I was the good girl."

With Ever After proving Barrymore's second consecutive hit film in America after the runaway success of The Wedding Singer, Lynskey's role in the film is already providing her with the kind of attention Heavenly Creatures promised yet largely failed to deliver. While it's stretching the truth to say the film offers are flooding in, at least Lynskey is now being sent the good scripts, given highly sought after auditions and getting work in an increasing number of interesting films. Meanwhile, the irony of her major Hollywood break coming in the form of the rags to riches fairy tale about Cinderella isn't lost on Lynskey.

Despite the attention and accolades generated by Lynskey's portrayal of Pauline Parker in Jackson's first foray into serious drama, her role in Heavenly Creatures wasn't the kick-start to a film career many, including Lynskey herself, initially anticipated it would be. While critics and moviegoers were captivated by her performance as a sullen, sensitive and palpably unstable schoolgirl, Lynskey was actually living a far less glamourous life. Tucked away in a small New Zealand town intent on finishing her seventh form year at New Plymouth Girls' High School, she spent some long, hard months weighing up her future and worrying that her unexpected break into an acting career was destined to be very short-lived indeed.

"I think the hardest thing was to go back to school," she muses, quick to assure me that most people were extremely supportive of her success. "It's a pretty catty environment at an all-girls school and things happened. For example, 60 Minutes came to do a story on me and followed me around for a day. At school, you just don't need that. And then I would have to go to New York or Sydney for a week and take time out. And, while they were amazing experiences, it was hard because I had these two completely separate lives. I think a lot of people resented that. It put me outside of them a bit."

For the academically-inclined Lynskey, finishing her final year at school was essential. But, while her classmates were relocating to various university hostels around the country, Lynskey was flying halfway around the world, convinced she was going to finally reap the benefits of Heavenly Creatures' success. Only it didn't work out that way. After a month-and-a-half in LA expecting to walk through the doors that should have opened with the film's success, Lynskey made the disappointing trip home with nothing to show for her time abroad except some fairly hefty emotional baggage.

"I felt really self-conscious the first time I came here to LA," she explains. "HORRIBLY self-conscious! There were these girls at auditions who were all SO old and SO skinny...I wasn't ready for it. I was terrified of being here. I thought: 'I have to grow. I'm not ready for it yet.' Now, I feel like LA is my favourite place in the world but only because now I've got the strength to tackle it and to live it a bit. It's a very competitive environment and when I came here I was like 17 or 18.

"It's hard when you've gone away and everyone is like, 'Oh, she's gone to LA. She's going to be a movie star,' " Lynskey continues, explaining the disappointment and self-doubt she experienced on her less than triumphant return to New Zealand. "It's hard to turn around and say, 'I'm not ready for it'. It was a really hard thing to do and I felt like I'd failed. I thought: 'I should be ready for this. I should be able to do this.' I was scared. I thought: 'God, maybe I can't do it! Maybe I can't even remember how to act anymore! Maybe it was a big fluke!' "

For the next 18 months after returning that first time, Lynskey attended Wellington's Victoria University, studying film, theatre and English. But the hardest lesson for the young actress to learn was adapting to life as an ordinary student after glimpsing what it would be like to live her dream. "There were times when I went back home and I felt like I was going crazy," she confesses. "I've always loved acting and I missed it so much."

Just when Lynskey had virtually resigned herself to a life without any further Hollywood hype, in stepped a new fairy godmother in the form of Gaylene Preston (Frances Walsh, co-writer of Heavenly Creatures and the woman who discovered and cast Lynskey in the film, will forever be her first fairy godmother). After auditioning for the lead in Preston's on-again, off-again film Ophelia, the director took Lynskey aside and suggested that, before she throw herself into the thespian world, she needed to "do whatever she needed to do to make herself strong". The advice rang true for Lynskey, who was still suffering from low self-esteem after the failed pilgrimage to LA. The young actress began looking after herself physically, took voice lessons and "just grew up as a person".

While Lynskey was waiting to hear whether she would be Preston's Ophelia, another offer came in. It was a role in Mark Tapio Kines' independent film Foreign Correspondents, filmed in LA and co-starring Wil Wheaton of Stand by Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation fame. Lynskey had already completed a small, blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo as a police officer in Jackson's The Frighteners, filmed mostly in Wellington. But, finally, she was off to tinsel town again. Only, this time, she not only had a part in a film but a renewed confidence in her ability to become the actress she had always dreamed of being.

It was while she was filming Foreign Correspondents that Lynskey successfully auditioned for Andy Tennant's third feature, Ever After, which meant she got to spend four months in Southern France, working and partying on a major Hollywood production. On her return to the United States, Lynskey found she had suddenly achieved a tangible name for herself as an actress. Roles in The Cherry Orchard, based on the Anton Chekov play and directed by Michael (Zorba The Greek) Cacoyannis in Bulgaria, and Detroit Rock City, the tale of a group of teenagers and their exploits en route to a KISS concert, filmed in Toronto by Adam Rifkin and starring T2's Eddie Furlong, followed. Filming has just wrapped on Detroit Rock City and Lynskey plans to return home for a fleeting festive visit. Before long though, she'll be back in LA to revisit the role of a teenage lesbian in the independent film But I'm a Cheerleader, which also stars her new friend from Detroit Rock City, Natasha Lyonnne (Everyone Says I Love You, Slums of Beverly Hills), who recommended Lynskey for the part.

Speaking to Lynskey from the Hollywood apartment she shares with one of her deep-voiced Cherry Orchard co-stars (it's his voice on the answerphone), I oscillate between musing on how much her burgeoning success has changed her and how unaffected she still seems to be. There is a discernible new-found confidence in Lynskey's speech and attitude towards herself and her career. Yet, while she's forthcoming and honest about her rising fortunes, Lynskey is quick to downplay any talk of stardom. The first 10 minutes of our interview are entirely occupied with Lynskey excitedly recalling the successes of various people she grew up with in New Plymouth. And, when she does allow herself to admit that things for herself are looking better than they ever have, she quickly becomes concerned and sweetly inquires: "Do you think I'm really arrogant?"

PAVEMENT: Like your character in Heavenly Creatures, a lot of girls fantasise about growing up to be a famous actress. Was it the same for you?
Lynskey: Oh, yeah, completely! I always wanted to be an actress or a writer. I can't remember ever wanting to do anything else since I was 12, when I discovered that these options were open to me. It was always such an important part of mine, and the people I was growing up with's, lives. I mean, we went to drama class on Friday nights and it was a very social thing. It was so important to get that release every week, I guess, from where you were living. It was funny doing European press for Ever After because they were all saying: 'Isn't it a dream of all young girls to grow up and be princesses?' And I sort of thought about it and I guess the modern daydream of young girls is to grow up and be a famous actress or a supermodel, God forbid, which are sort of modern day princesses.

Considering it was your ambition from the age of 12 to act and that Fran Walsh's discovery of you was such a lucky break, do you think there's some kind of fate or destiny at work in your life?
Yeah, I think so. I feel so lucky, I don't want to jinx it! They [Heavenly Creatures' Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh] found me at the perfect moment in my life, when I could play this really individual character. They picked me out of 600 other people because they could see that it was the right time and they could see in me what they needed. I think it is some kind of destiny for someone to come to New Plymouth and find you in this group of girls and give you this amazing opportunity which has opened up so much for me.

So, do you think that if it had been a year earlier or a year later, you wouldn't have been the perfect girl for that role?
Yeah, I think so. I was going through all the normal teenage things, but some fairly intense teenage things as well, that I think were perfect. In a way, I was young enough but I had that kind of maturity that Pauline had as well. I was in a very sort of adult relationship and a close friend of ours had died. There was a lot of stuff that was open to me. I don't know that a lot of 15-year-old girls have access to a lot of the emotions that those two girls were feeling. But I had it all in me and if it had been a year earlier, I wouldn't have been ready. And if it had been a year later, I would have resolved it all.

In retrospect, was it a step backward for you to go to LA that first time to pursue your acting career, only to return to New Zealand unsuccessful and pretty depressed?
I think I just needed to grow up and I needed to believe in myself. I think that's the biggest thing you need here. You just have to have such confidence because you're getting turned down for things left, right and centre.

Did your parents ever give you the "It's time to stop dreaming and get a real job" speech?
They didn't do that. I mean, it was crazy of me to go to LA right off the bat. Maybe I could have gone to Australia and done that...Just a little step. I think they really felt for me. My parents understand me and they know me really well and they knew it wasn't a healthy choice I was making. So, when I came home, they were really protective of me. But, last year, when they saw that I was ready for it, that I couldn't do what I was doing anymore, that I couldn't stay in New Zealand because I was desperate to act--I was HUNGRY for it--they said: 'Go and do everything'. They were great about it.

Was it hard for you to understand why you weren't successful initially, especially considering how Heavenly Creatures really seemed to launch Kate Winslet's career?
No, not really. I mean, Pauline in Heavenly Creatures was an amazing performance and I'm very proud of it but it's not the kind of character that makes people in Hollywood go, 'Oh, my God! The girl can do anything!' I got a lot of attention from it and I'm finding that it's helping me now because...It sounds so dreadful to say this and I hate the way thing work here, but, physically, now I'm of a type that's accepted here. I lost a lot of weight and my face is a different shape and I just kind of grew up and grew into myself. So now I find that I'm going up for any type of role...The girlfriend, the pretty girl, whatever. Now I've got Ever After behind me, where people can say 'Well, we know she can act because she's done this.' Whereas, with Heavenly Creatures, it was like, 'Well, we know she can act but I don't think she could fit into this part or this part or this part...' With Kate, she's gorgeous and she played the part of a beautiful girl in the film and it's easy for people to watch it and go, 'I can imagine her in this and this and this...'

Still, despite your physical transformation, you're hardly the typical American beauty. Is that working in your favour now?
I think I'm comfortable with myself now and...I don't know how to say this because it's a funny thing to be talking about...Now, physically, I fit into a lot more places. There are a lot more different parts people can cast me in now. There are a lot more ways they can see me. I didn't go out and try to change myself so I could get work. It just happened when I spent that time growing up and taking care of myself. It just happened, honestly, when I had that talk with Gaylene Preston. I just felt like my whole life opened up and I got this new confidence in every way. Also, I think people's attitudes are changing. Because independent films have been so successful in recent years and more interesting actresses, like Christina Ricci, are being cast in bigger movies, I think people are more open to a quirky kind of attractiveness. I mean, by no means am I like most of the girls that are at these auditions with me. They're SO skinny. They look like they've never eaten in their lives and spent their whole lives on a tanning bed. The leathery waif...[laughs] I'm not like that, by any means. It's so funny. Maybe it's a New Zealand thing but I still get so much guilt about saying I look better.

Celebrities, especially actors, seem very fond of claiming that success hasn't changed them. But you don't even sound like the same person you were two years ago!
I mean, I'm still so nervous of even discussing this because I'm so scared that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and it will all be gone. I know that I'm not experiencing any huge success or anything like that. I feel like it's going good and it could keep going well. I think the main thing that's changed is that, although I still get terrified, I think now, maybe, I could make this my life. I'm putting 'actor' on my forms for immigration. I always used to put 'unemployed' or 'student' or something and now I'm writing 'actor'. I can say that I do this. I think it's what I was always meant to do. And I just feel so lucky to be allowed to do it and it's made me happy--happy with myself--and that's changed me.

The other cliché actors often insist upon is that being in the movie industry isn't glamourous. But, here you are at 20, jet-setting around the world, living in LA, earning lots of money, going out to dinnner and getting drunk with people like Drew Barrymore and Anjelica Huston...Surely you can't say your life isn't glamourous!
It's so funny because when you get picked up at three o'clock in the morning to do a night shoot and it's horrible weather and you've got to make out with some guy you don't even know, it's not glamorous! The work isn't glamorous but the life is. I mean, I'm not living any movie star life but, like, the other night, Natasha Lyonne, Claire Duvall [also in But I'm a Cheerleader] and me got front row tickets to a KISS concert. And to treat ourselves, we hired a limo [laughs]. It sounds so terrible and decadent but we spent the night like three young actresses, roaming around LA in this limo, saying 'Take us here and take us there.'

Acting the lifestyle...
Yeah, completely. And I thought then: 'It is kind of glamorous.' Even though we were just playing, it was fun. Nobody had a clue who any of us were but it was something fun and girly and glamorous!

Something which really struck me when I was going through the EVER AFTER press kit was how visually similar you and Drew look in the film.
Everyone says that. It's so funny.

What's it like to be compared to this woman who men and women go crazy over?
Well, I mean, obviously it's amazing! [laughs] It's such a huge compliment. I don't know... I can't see it myself. Drew, it's like she's got this light inside of her, which I think is why people love her so much and are so drawn to her. And it's so bright inside her that I think: 'Oh my God! I can't compare myself to Drew!' Because, honestly, she's like she's from another world or something. We've both got chubby faces and long chins...She'd love it if she read that!

On the subject of Drew, there's been a rumour circulating back here that the two of you had a torrid affair while you were making Ever After...
[Laughs] That's not true! I was going out with her production assistant! [laughs] She's got a boyfriend who she's been with for years. Oh, I wonder where that got started? We're pretty close, though, Drew and I. She's pretty touchy-feely; she's a huggy girl. But that's cool. We weren't making out in each other's trailers or anything! I wouldn't mind! [laughs] I'm selling that one to Woman's Day. It's an exclusive, I'm afraid [laughs].

Keeping that rumour in mind, and considering that But I'm a Cheerleader will be your second lesbian role, do you think that you might replace Lucy Lawless as New Zealand's new lesbian icon?
Oh God! [laughs] I think I already am! But I think Cheerleader is definitely going to contribute to that.

Okay, despite the fact that we can't all fantasise about you and Drew together now, it must have been pretty wild to be getting drunk with people like Drew and Anjelica, whom you must have previously considered these movie icons far removed from your own reality...
At first, it was terrifying. Drew was cool. I mean, for a long time, it was just me and her cast in the movie, so we had lots of correspondence. She said how excited she was to be working with me and I said it back. So we kind of broke the ice and she's my age and she's very easy-going. But the first time I met Anjelica, we were having makeup tests and she came in in this big white robe [laughs]. And her hair was all swept up and she's got that amazing, gorgeous face. And I was like 'Oh my God! Oh my God! What do I say?' And she came over to me and said [mimics American accent]: 'I think you're a marvellous actress and I loved Heavenly Creatures'. And from then on it just got cool. There were moments when we were sitting around drunk, doing some ridiculous thing, or crying or something, and I'd go: 'Oh my God. It's Anjelica Huston!' Or: 'It's Drew Barrymore!' "

So they always made you feel part of that lifestyle?
L: It's weird because we were in France and we were sort of shut away from everything and we had a normal kind of social life. Then when I came back to LA, the times I've gone out to dinner with Anjelica here are weird because she's got a defence--and Drew has, as well--just to shut off from the fact that people are openly staring or following her around. It's terrifying to me. I went into a bar one night with Drew and we were in this little curtained booth, for celebrities or something, and someone came in and pulled back the curtain and started taking pictures of her. People were sliding bits of paper under the curtain all night, saying 'Can I have your autograph?' She was bugged all night and yet she's so sweet and so gracious about it. I was just thinking: 'How can she live that way?' She's so famous, it's crazy. I mean, it's even weirder for Kate, I think, because the British press are so unbelieveably cruel and invasive.

Although you want to be a successful actress, does an experience like that make you question whether it's worth aspiring to be in that league of fame?
Yeah! I mean, the only benefit of fame I guess I can see is that you get the first choice of all the best movies. Everything that I audition for, Drew's been offered, Kate's been offered...And I've really got to work to get them.

Are you working towards any grand plan, then?
I will win two Oscars in the next year! That's my plan [laughs]. Best Supporting and Best Actress in the same year! No, I just want to keep doing it. I mean, my agents have a plan, which is a bit scary to me. They don't want to sit me down because they know what I'm like. They know I'd panic. But, occasionally, they slip up and say, 'Well, the next film has to be a lead.' And I'm like, 'Why? How do you know that? What do you mean?' I'm too scared to make plans because who knows what's going to happen. I just want to keep working, to keep doing cool things. I'm just so happy with where I am. I mean, I'm going into meetings and people are respecting me and saying things like: 'Oh, I love your work.' And I think: 'Oh God! I actually have a body of work!' I feel like that's an achievement. Like, this is my dream come true. Obviously, it would be nice to get statues and houses and whatever else. But I imagined my life would be doing plays and doing a movie, if I was lucky. And now, it's just incredible!

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Fairytale Ending to Actor's Long Search for Work
New York Daily News, Aug 1997
By Brendan Cole

The career of actor Melanie Lynskey has taken a fairytale turn.

The 20-year-old New Plymouth woman will star alongside Hollywood luminary Drew Barrymore -- who plays the title role in the 20th Century Fox film Cinderella.

It has been three years since Lynskey starred in Peter Jackson's award-winning film Heavenly Creatures in which she played Pauline Parker, a wallflower whose obsessive friendship with Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet) led the pair to bludgeon Parker's mother to death.

Lynskey then travelled to Los Angeles last year to audition for further film roles but was unsuccessful.

However, on her return visit in June, before she began her part in a forthcoming film called Foreign Correspondents, she tried for the part of Jacqueline de Ghent -- Cinderella's ugly sister.

"The audition was great, they were very enthusiastic -- usually an audition is terrifying because you only have a few minutes to put everything into it. You really feel the pressure, but this was just really fun," she said.

And it was her agent who told her the good news.

"I was just amazed. Whenever I am waiting to hear from someone, I am used to my agent saying 'they loved you but the other person was more famous, or something like that. My agent has always been honest.

"But halfway through the conversation she said: 'Oh, that's right, you got the part', I was like 'are you sure?'."

Lynskey said learning how to overcome audition nerves was one of the reasons behind her success and she attributed part of her new- found confidence to advice from top New Zealand director Gaylene Preston.

"In Hollywood auditions, no matter what sort of character you play, they like you to be totally confident as if the part is yours. This time I really got the confidence to go in there and feel good about myself."

After narrowly missing out on a part in the film The Crucible, Lynskey returned to New Zealand last year to ponder her future and deal with constant questioning about what and when her next film would be. While Lynskey toiled away in auditon after audition, Heavenly Creatures co-star Kate Winslet experienced a meteoric rise to fame.

"People are eager to draw comparisons between us, but we are two completely different actresses who will always be doing different things. She does wonderful work. People in the industry understand how hard it is to get work, but a lot of people expected that if you do one movie, then you just do more. I felt that a lot of people thought there was something wrong with me."

Lynskey will not reveal too much about Cinderella, except that it is a "different" version of the age-old fairytale. Today she flies to London for costume fitting and then will spend time with her co-star Drew Barrymore before rehearsals start on Monday.

And from being a Victoria University student used to living in draughty flats, she is looking forward to working on a set in the sunny south of France with some of Hollywood's greatest stars.

"My agents are so excited about the future and I'm a bit scared to walk towards it because I have not worked in four years. It has not sunk in yet."