Melanie Lynskey's 'moment' has been a long time coming.
Following her debut as a teenager in Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed Heavenly Creatures, alongside an also not-yet-famous Kate Winslet, Lynskey moved from her hometown of New Plymouth in New Zealand's North Island to Los Angeles.
From Ever After, to Coyote Ugly and Sweet Home Alabama, to The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and of course as quirky neighbour Rose in Two And A Half Men, Lynskey built a really solid Hollywood career playing supporting roles.
She was the perfect example of those stars you see in a project, and think 'I know them from somewhere', but you can never quite place them.
Watch: The trailer for Yellowjackets. Post continues below video.
Not anymore.
In the past year, Lynskey's skills have been able to shine in leading roles; first in Paramount+'s Yellowjackets, and more recently in Candy, on Disney+.
It's taken a long time to get here, but Lynskey had a heads up it was coming.
"This sounds so crazy, but I talked to a psychic, who I love, and she told me this was gonna happen," she told InStyle in a July 2022 profile.
"It had been months and months since we shot the [Yellowjackets] pilot, and she said, 'That show's gonna get picked up and it's gonna be really big, and you're gonna enter into a time in your career that you thought, if this didn't happen when you were 25, it was never going to happen. It's about to happen.'
"I was like, I just don't think that's possible. Thank you so much, like, she can't always be right."
Or maybe she can be.
Yellowjackets has been nominated for seven Emmy awards this year, including an Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series nomination for Lynskey - her first nomination. She has already won a Critics' Choice Television Award, and the series has been picked up for a second season.
In the US, it's the second most-streamed series in Showtime history.
Also starring Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci and Tawny Cypress, Yellowjackets follows a girl's soccer team that becomes stranded in the Canadian wilderness in 1996. The series jumps between the 90s and the present day as the surviving teammates navigate life after the traumatic incident.
It has been a real change of pace.
"I'm used to doing something and then having a couple people be like, 'I saw that!' And then it just kind of floats away," Lynskey joked on an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers.
Despite the show's success, Lynskey's goal wasn't hinged on being a leading star.
"My gratitude for being a working actor—being able to make a living as an actor for almost 30 years… it's crazy," Lynskey told Backstage. "That was my only goal in this career, that I wouldn't have to have another job. And I haven't had to. Anything else is just so far beyond my wildest dreams."
While her profile has exploded over the past year, Lynskey has found herself in a weird paradox.
On one hand, she's finally in the right place at the right time.
For decades, everyone she came into contact with has praised Lynskey for her talent and kindness, so her typecasting as the supporting character is not based on a lack of skill or work.
In fact, many fans are still shocked to hear her talk with her New Zealand accent, a major testament to her character acting skills.
Instead, we have made progress since Lynskey's rise in the 90s on the definition of a 'leading lady' - who she is, what she looks like, how old she is. There's still a way to go, but there are undoubtedly more roles available for women who don't look like the leading ladies we became used to over decades of cinema.
Lynskey has been open about how the commentary about her body over the past 30 years has impacted her.
The Washington Post's review of Heavenly Creatures, which she filmed when she was 15, described her as "the fat one in the back, the disaster, the smudge with the ugly scowl and unruly black curls".
She battled with her body for a long time, suffered from eating disorders and experienced criticism and judgement from many within the industry: including a wardrobe worker on Coyote Ugly, who shamed her for not being sample-size.
Finally, after a decade of working against her body, she was able to make peace with it.
"I had a lot of beliefs when I started about what I was supposed to look like and it feels very nice to be in a body that I'm comfortable in, to be ageing and have people want to cast me," Lynskey told People in May 2022.
The success of Yellowjackets has thrust her into the spotlight like never before.
"It feels very vulnerable to be public all of a sudden. But I'm very grateful to be 45 years old and in the body I'm in and to have opportunities and be doing interesting work. It's great," she told InStyle.
But with this newfound level of fame, she has found her body being talked about perhaps more than ever before.
The criticism has made way for praise, but it's still a strange phenomenon.
She is, at once, pleased to be "normalising" differences in shape and size on screen, and also frustrated at how her appearance is still so central to her story.
"Sometimes, I get tired of hearing about my body, even when it is positive, I just, you know, feel like I need a break from thinking about it and hearing about it and I think all women feel that way," she said.
She pointed to people praising her husband, actor Jason Ritter, for tweeting about how hot he finds her.
"I said to him, 'Isn't it funny that if I was a Victoria's Secret model, and you tweeted the exact same thing, people would not respond the way that they do?'" she said.
"People get excited because I look like I look, and my husband, he's like a cute, young actor, but I am aware that some of the responses to him are like, 'Good for you.' It's like, well, he got together with me because he found me attractive. It's not like he's throwing himself on the sword for the rest of mankind.
"And also — he had competition."
In conversation with Orange is the New Black's Danielle Brooks, her Sadie co-star, Lynskey said the ultimate goal is to get to the point where bodies are not even a talking point, no matter what they look like.
"Very thin women are real women. All women are real women. All bodies are beautiful and I just really would love to get to the point where we can have all different kinds of bodies and it's just not commented on in the way that it is right now."
Feature image: Getty/Mamamia.
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