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In the decades since she shot to fame in Peter Jackson’s award-winning Heavenly Creatures, there have been myriad ways to describe the roles Melanie Lynskey has played in Hollywood – quirky, headstrong, slightly unhinged…
Now, there’s a new one to add to the mix – angry!
In her hit new psychological drama Yellowjackets, currently streaming on Neon, the Kiwi actress plays Shauna, an unassuming mum with a secret. Simmering just below her sweet smile – and collection of ceramic bunny ornaments – is a streak of barely disguised fury, and Melanie, 44, admits she had to dig deep to find her inner wrath for the part.
“The way I was brought up was to not show a ton of emotion and not get angry,” Melanie shared in a recent interview. “I’m trying to get better at letting the anger come out at all. There’s so many years of just not knowing what to do with it.
Melanie and her husband, Jason Ritter.
“I had a therapist once say something about, ‘You’re scared that if you even let a little bit of it out, it’ll just never stop. It’ll just overwhelm you and you’ll just be furious forever,’ which really resonated with me.”
Not that the New Plymouth born-and-bred star has so much to be angry about right now. Three years ago, she and her actor partner Jason Ritter, 41, were over the moon to welcome their first child, a baby daughter.
And at an age where once her career would have been all but over, the Don’t Look Up star has never had so many interesting roles to choose from.
It all comes, she says, from finally being truly accepting of who she is.
Melanie has made no secret of her body image struggles over the years, once saying, “I was losing my mind trying to conform to something that was not physically possible for me.
“The representation is important.” Melanie with her Yellowjackets co-stars (from left) Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci.
“I was very unwell for a long time. I had eating issues… I was so unhappy, and my hair was falling out.
“I was like, ‘I just need to look the way I’m supposed to look’ and have faith that people are going to want to put someone in a film or on a show who looks like this. I did have to truly become comfortable with myself because you can’t fake it.”
For her role in Yellowjackets, she says, it was vitally important to her that her character didn’t put on a dress and feel “like, ‘I wish I looked a bit better.’
“I want women to be able to watch it and be like, ‘Wow, she looks like me and nobody’s saying she’s the fat one.’ That representation is important.”
It’s been more than 28 years since Melanie, then 15, teamed up with Kate Winslet for Heavenly Creatures, based on the true story of how two teenagers committed a grisly murder in Christchurch in 1954.
Three years later, Kate was firmly on the A-list after her star turn in Titanic, while the more retiring Melanie at first returned to her old life in Taranaki.
“I was the person who was sort of just sitting there while everyone was excited about somebody prettier,” shares Melanie. “Kate was very confident. She found it very easy to do interviews and it was hard for me. I was so shy.
“Kate was somebody who knew how the world worked and knew how to be a beautiful woman. I felt like, ‘I’m never gonna be that.’ She just felt magical to me.”
In fact, she says, she was even sent home halfway through the press tour for Heavenly Creatures when notorious producer Harvey Weinstein “made the call that nobody really wanted to hear from me”.
Eventually she got an agent and moved to Tinseltown, and the rest is history.
“I’m homesick,” she says. “I’m just praying I get a job in New Zealand!”
Despite her ever-rising star, LA-based Melanie maintains she lives a “small” life, going to work, hiking, taking trips to the beach and enjoying motherhood. “I wasn’t one of those people who was like, ‘The one thing I know is that I want to be a mum,'” she confesses. But “when I was sure, I was really sure that I wanted to do it and embraced it fully. And then I was lucky that it happened.”
She and Jason were devastated when a few months before Yellowjackets began filming last year, Melanie suffered a miscarriage. “I felt it every day,” she says of the loss.
It was a time when being surrounded by her family would have been a tonic, but pandemic travel restrictions mean she hasn’t been home for more than two years.
“I’m homesick,” she says. “I’m just praying I get a job in New Zealand!”
