Melanie Lynskey

Melanie Lynskey
Lynskey at the screening of Up in the Air
Born	Melanie Jayne Lynskey 16 May 1977 (1977-05-16) (age 32) New Plymouth, New Zealand
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1992–present
Spouse(s)	Jimmi Simpson (2007-present)

Melanie Jayne Lynskey (born 16 May 1977) is a New Zealand actress best known for playing Charlie Harper's neighbor Rose on Two and a Half Men, and a range of characters in films such as The Informant!, Away We Go, Flags of Our Fathers, Shattered Glass, Ever After and Heavenly Creatures.

Early life

Lynskey was born in New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand, the eldest of five children (three brothers and one sister). She studied at New Plymouth Girls' High School and attended drama classes.

Career

Early works, 1992–2002

In 1992, at the age of 15, Melanie won her first professional acting role as Pauline Parker in the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures, based on the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder, opposite Kate Winslet. Over 500 young actors auditioned for the role of Pauline Parker before Lynskey was cast with Jackson recalling "we knew if we cast an intelligent person, then they were going to hit it. Melanie's also very enigmatic. So what we were looking for was an actress who has that kind of aspect to her...where you can film somebody sitting in a room, doing nothing, and they're still fascinating to watch. We found that in Mel."^[1]

The film was released to critical acclaim in 1994 with Richard Corliss of Time magazine describing her performance as "perfect, fearless in embodying teenage hysteria".^[2] Heavenly Creatures won Jackson and partner Fran Walsh a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay^[3] and is now considered a cult film.^[4] Lynskey was named Best Actress at the New Zealand Film and TV Awards in 1995 for her performance.

After release of the film, Lynskey returned to New Zealand to complete high school and would begin studying a Bachelor of Arts degree at Victoria University of Wellington, majoring in English Literature. She would later make a cameo as a police deputy in Jackson's next film The Frighteners.^[5]

Her first appearance in American film was as Jacqueline de Ghent in Ever After opposite Drew Barrymore and Anjelica Huston and was quickly followed by roles in films such as Detroit Rock City, an adaptation of the Anton Chekhov play The Cherry Orchard alongside Charlotte Rampling and the Jerry Bruckheimer produced Coyote Ugly where she took on a New Jersey accent.

In 2002 she played her first television role in the Stephen King mini series Rose Red. She acted alongside Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama and guested on The Shield.

2003–present

In Shattered Glass, a 2003 drama revolving around political journalism, she played Amy Brand - a writer for The New Republic where a Washington, D.C. journalist Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) was exposed for his journalist fraud by his editor Charles Lane (Peter Sarsgaard). The film received positive reviews, with A. O. Scott of the New York Times referring to the film as "a serious, well-observed examination of the practice of journalism", and "an astute and surprisingly gripping drama".^[6]

She has appeared as Rose, the sweet and zany neighbor on the Emmy Award-winning Two and a Half Men opposite Charlie Sheen since 2003. The sitcom is frequently in the top 10 of American television shows.^[7] Martin Sheen, Charlie Sheen's father, guested on the show playing the father of Rose.

In 2006 she had a small but substantial role in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-nominated World War II drama Flags of Our Fathers^[8] and returned to New Zealand in late 2007 to a starring role in film Show of Hands which premiered at the Montreal Film Festival in 2008.

Her latest role is in the Sam Mendes comedy-drama Away We Go, with Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe describing her performance as dramatizing "sadness and dysfunction with quiet, moving physicality".^[9]

She played the female lead opposite Matt Damon in the Steven Soderbergh black-comedy film The Informant! about FBI whistleblower Mark Whitacre. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival with The Independent noting "sterling support comes from Melanie Lynskey as Whitacre's ever-loyal wife".^[10] Soderbergh told the Los Angeles Times, "She is so watchable, you never quite know what you're going to get, you just know it was going to be good. Her rhythms are really unusual, like her cadence and her reaction times to things, and the way she sort of lays out a sentence. It's just really, really interesting".^[11]

Currently awaiting release is the Tim Blake Nelson film Leaves of Grass alongside Edward Norton as well as Up in the Air where she plays the younger sister of George Clooney.

Personal life

In 2001 she met her future husband, New Jersey-born actor Jimmi Simpson, whilst co-starring in the Stephen King mini series Rose Red and they became engaged in 2005.

On 14 April 2007 they married in a chapel overlooking a vineyard on Lake Hayes, in Queenstown, New Zealand.^[12] Also in attendance was her best friend and Rose Red co-star Emily Deschanel,^[13] who was one of her bridesmaids. Lynskey currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband.

Filmography

Film

Television

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Melanie Lynskey

• Melanie Lynskey at the Internet Movie Database