Melanie Lynskey exploded into film 20 years ago, playing a murderous teenager in Heavenly Creatures — now she’s a hipster mom in Happy Christmas . She talks about her career choices, Charlie Sheen, and full-frontal nudity.
Melanie Lynskey and Joe Swanberg in Happy Christmas.
Magnolia Pictures
When Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh went looking for the perfect actress to play Pauline Parker in Heavenly Creatures, they found her in 15-year-old Melanie Lynskey, a small town girl from New Zealand. According to a story in the Washington Post from the fall of 1994, when the movie was released, the filmmakers looked at between 500 and 600 girls to play the seething, simmering Pauline, who, with her best friend (and girlfriend) Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), murders Pauline's mother. "The film was obviously going to live or die on its casting," Jackson told the Post about the search at the time. Walsh and Jackson went on to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay, and Lynskey won Best Actress at the New Zealand Film & Television Awards.
Twenty years later, Lynskey, 37, is living in Los Angeles, where she's spent most of her adult life, and working consistently, doing both movies and television. Whereas you could once see her in supporting roles on a more massive scale — as a friend in Sweet Home Alabama or Coyote Ugly, or as Two and a Half Men's crazed stalker, Rose — she has more recently homed in on a vibrant career in independent movies. On Friday, Joe Swanberg's sweet Sundance film, Happy Christmas, in which she co-stars opposite Swanberg, Anna Kendrick, Lena Dunham, and Jude Swanberg (a toddler, and a scene-stealer), will begin its theatrical rollout. (It has been available on iTunes and on demand for a month.)
In Happy Christmas, Lynskey plays Kelly, a Chicago novelist and mother who finds herself wondering about her life and her ambitions when her husband's (Swanberg) wild, fucked up sister (Kendrick) moves in with them. That's slightly wild, and a little fucked up; everyone is pretty nice here. It's a lovely movie. And Lynskey, whose character you might think is going to be an uptight scold, creates a real-seeming person in Kelly. You'd want to hang out with her.
Lynskey and I met recently — in an empty screening room at the University of Southern California's film school, which was an odd setting, but we got over it, I think — to talk about her career.
Heavenly Creatures came out 20 years ago. Does it feel like that to you?
Melanie Lynskey: I mean, it's scary to think that I was acting 20 years ago. But when I think about it, it feels like a really long time ago.
You were in normal school, and Fran Walsh was basically going door-to-door looking for someone to play Pauline Parker?
ML: Yeah. She was driving around schools in New Zealand, auditioning girls.
Were you a theater kid?
ML: I'm from a very provincial town, so I couldn't get an agent or do anything like that. But I did all the local theater.
What kind of teenager were you?
ML: I was a little bit naughty. I really liked boys a lot. I come from a very relaxed family where nobody knows what time you're getting home. Sometimes my parents would be, like, "You need to have a curfew!" But then they would never do anything about it. I didn't have a lot of rules.
Lynskey in Heavenly Creatures.
Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection
So you ended up auditioning for Peter Jackson.
ML: He showed me Kate Winslet's audition tape before my second audition. Which is one of the meanest things. She's this professional actress, and he showed it to me and he was, like, "This is how good you have to be."
That is mean. And she had been acting professionally, and living on her own, I think. That was different from your experience.
ML: She was, like, an old pro at that point. She was two years older than me, but when you're 15, two years feels huge. I had never met anybody that glamorous before. She had a big pile of headshots, and she was, like, "Oh, they're for fans." I was, like, "What?"
That must have worked well for your characters' power dynamic.
ML: It could not have been more perfect. I idolized her.
Do you feel like if that movie came out now, everyone would be more relaxed about whether the girls are or aren't lesbians? It was such a different time in terms of sexuality on screen.
ML: That was the thing that really confused me when I was doing press for that movie. Again, my household was very permissive, and I had made out with girls, and been, like, Who knows? Everyone's kind of everything, right? I was very loose about that kind of thing. Some of my friends had gay parents. And that was all anyone was asking me: "Are they lesbians?"
