"Gosh, it's all so much fun. Um, I like how I just appear sometimes on the deck. But it's really cold out on the decks - they have wind machines that make it look like the trees are blowing, but I - It's fun, and I also like that I seem to be becoming more of a normal person rather than this stalker all the time....

"Because she's so different from me it's fun to play. 'Cause she's so sort of energetic. She's this rich girl from Malibu, and she just is completely clueless about, like, you know, the way she's so intense, and I'm not really at all. I'm kind of laid back, so it's really fun to come to work and really be, like, all dancing around....

"It's lovely. He's so great. He's so generous and funny and kind and just works so hard my god it's amazing, and he's so funny on the show as well....

"Charlie Sheen plays a free-wheeling bachelor who lives on the beach in Malibu, and his straitlaced brother moves in with him and brings his little boy along, and they all try to live together. And then I guess there are these three women who sort of come in and out of their lives - and that's the brother John Cryer's ex-wife and me and Holland, who's their mother. Well, my character's a maniac, stalking Charlie. She's not really. She's just a bit misguided. I think she thinks she's met the man of her dreams, so she's just going to go after him, but she's a sweet girl, I think."

Melanie Lynskey: Finding Her Place (Staples, Oct/Nov, 2003)
by Gemma Gracewood

Days before an early morning conversation with Melanie Lynskey, I caught a Sky Movies screening of Heavenly Creatures. I hadn't watched it in years, preparing for this interview instead by renting the laughable Coyote Ugly, the odd Sweet Home Alabama, and the '70s teen romp Detroit Rock City.

But as I flicked randomly through channels, there they were: Lynskey and Winslet. Parker and Hulme. Still two of the most incredible, compelling debut performances in film. Lynskey's Pauline Parker is pouty, determined, at times downright scary. Dark shadows appear beneath her eyes as quickly as a rosy glow across her cheeks vanishes. She switches from hysteria to calculating stillness in seconds. She's gorgeous, she's ugly, passionate and brutal. She's a 16-year-old murderer, after all, and Lynskey played it perfectly.

She deserves to be what she is: one of New Zealand's most internationally successful actors. In the decade since her Heavenly Creatures debut, she has played side-kick, saucy temptress, ugly sister, wacko library girl, quirky cop and best friend alongside such Hollywood recognisables as Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon, Katie Holmes and that girl from Coyote Ugly. In fifteen films, she's made out in a church confessional, murdered her mother, met cowboy violence on South Island back-roads and perfected a New Jersey accent. And she has infused each role with her dark-eyed beauty, eccentric humour and minxy intelligence.

Right now, Lynskey is ensconced in her first full-time job, the television sitcom Two and a Half Men. I[n] it, Charlie Sheen plays Charlie Harper, a self-absorbed bachelor and advertising jingle-writer, whose life is upturned when his soon-to-be-divorced younger brother Alan (played by Jon Cryer, Pretty in Pink's superb Ducky) moves in with his ten-year-old son. This is big news: not only is Melanie acting alongside two of the best of the 1980s teen-movie genration (who could forget Charlie Sheen's pash with Jennifer Grey in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?), the sitcom is also one of the most heavily promoted releases on the CBS network's fall schedule.

Lynskey plays Charlie Sheen's ex-girlfriend in the new sitcom. She has a gorgeous wardrobe and a slew of hilarious lines as her "beautiful but unstable" character refuses to believe she and Charlie have broken up. "He can't get rid of her," Lynskey laughs. "In the first episode, she's trying to get into his house. She gets in a wanders around it, trying on his clothes. She's crazy. I laughed so much when I read the script. I mean, it's a sitcom so it's gotta be funny, but they're not always, are they? This one is funny."

It's very early on a mid-winter morning in Wellington and I'm sitting next to the heater with a fresh pot of tea. Miles away at midday, Melanie Lynskey is releaxing at home in the year-round warmth of Los Angeles, explaining how she finally made her break into full-time television. Until now, she'd been working in the United States on a performer's visa, so her small screen work was limited to a Stephen King mini-series and a few episodes of The Shield. Finally, her Green Card came through, meaning she could enter the annual television "pilot season" - the best chance an actor has of landing a decent role in a new TV series. And on her first pilot season, she landed one.

Film is still a priority thought. She'll soon be onscreen in Shattered Glass, with a to-die-for cast that includes Hayden "Anakin" Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard, Chloe Sevigny and Hank Azaria. It tells the true story of Stephen Glass (Christensen), a prolific and popular young Washington[,] DC reporter who excelled in writing flashy pieces for prestigious publications such as The New Republic, George, Rolling Stone and Harpers.

Based on Buzz Bissinger's Vanity Fair article, the film explores how Glass managed to fool everyone around him - it is believed that he made up 27 of the 41 articles he wrote for the New Republic, not to mention several of his freelance pieces for those other magazines.

Lynsky[sic] plays Glass' envious, hard-working office mate, who excels at writing dry policy pieces. "To prepare for the character, the director asked me to research and write an article about farm subsidies, which was really fun! I'm proud of myslef[sic] for finding out about farm subsidies! It wasn't a great article, but you get the idea of my character. She's great friends with Hayden's character, but she's jealous of him. She wasn't to be the one writing the glossy articles." Shattered Glass is a timely film, given the recent trouble that other American publications - including the venerable and venerated New York Times - have had with writers fabricating stories. In a clever piece of casting, the Times' most recent embarrassment, Jayson Blair, is reportedly reviewing Shattered Glass for Esquire. And Stephen Glass? He has completed a law degree and written a "fictional novel" about a young reporter who, ahem, invented most of his stories.

It seems you can't do anything wrong in the States, and if you do, it is possible to use it to your advantage, to reinvent yourself and get back on that celebrity horse. It's a second-chance kinda nation, and in a roudabout way, Melanie Lynskey has benefited from that come-back attitude.

She was discovered just weeks before principal shooting began on Heavenly Creatures, during screenwriter Fran Walsh's epic search through lower-North Island classrooms for a Pauline Parker to play opposite Kate Winslet's Juliet Hulme. The rapid critical and Oscar-nominated success of Heavenly Creatures saw Lynskey set her sights higher than the stage career in Wellington she'd been preparing for. But it wasn't a snap.

Much has been written about her first venture to Hollywood. About how Kate Winslet went from strength to strength while Lynskey faced a townful of young, confident, competitive beauties and high-tailed it home after just six weeks, enrolling at university and dealing with a growing depression, whereupon drector Gaylene Preston got a hold of her and told her to do what she needed to do to make herself a stronger person, and get back out there again. Which she did, landing a role as the not-so-ugly stepsister to Drew Barrymore's Cinderella in Ever After.

But in those glossy articles, it sounds too easy. I want the details, I ask Lynskey. On a practical level, how does one go about sorting oneself out?

It wa[s]n't easy, she acknowledges. "The thing is, you can't say to somebody who is depressed, 'snap out of it'. It's easy to feel very overwhelmed and unable to deal with the smallest thing. Everything seems daunting. So Gaylene just told me 'write a list of eveytthing you think is stopping you'. And I did. It was jsut[sic] incredible. And then she said to work through each of those things one by one. And I did."

To actually write the list and tick each item off - get fit, take voice lessons and so on - was both Lynskey's challenge and her triumph. She still reminds herself of that list, every day. "I am obsessive about writing lists! I'm always making lists of goals and never feel like I've done enough. My boyfriend is always telling me that I have, he's always telling me to appreciate what I've done."

That's not to say that the depression has permanently lifted. It revisited her in force more recently, leading Lynskey to do a whole heap of work on learning not to be so hard on herself, learning to be happy with what she's got. She's reluctant to reveal to a New Zealand audience that her healing process has involved sessions with a holistic doctor, because it "sounds so LA".

"I feel so embarrassed. I sound like such a flake! I fel tlike[sic] it was so wanky and self-obsessed of me .But[sic] I was depressed and crying all the time, just feeling really sad. You know, when you're depressed, you really need a lot of energy to even get out of bed in the morning. It's horrible.

"Actually making the appointment with him was more important than the actual session. It was me making the decision with myself, like, okay I wanna do something."

The doctor discussed diet issues with her. She has cut out sugar and white flour, doesn't drink coffee, and doesn't drink alcohol--except for wine. He gave her some acupuncture and "weird light therapy".[sic] She's not sure if that worked, "but he gave me some very good advice. Whenever I feel like I'm starting to get depressed, he has given me some things to use, so that it doesn't feel like an unstoppable force coming down on me. I can control it now.

"A lot of the emotional stuff can freak you out, but you want to hold on to it, you want to protect it because it's part of your art and part of who you are. I know for myself, I've had horrible problems with depression, I've had al kinds of emotional issues. And I've thought 'you can use this'. But then sometimes you just have to let go of the art. You realise you're playing the 'best friend' in some Hollywood movie, so there's no need to torture yourself!

"I think I understand that feeling because now I'm really truly happy for the first time in ten years. I just don't want all that drama all the time. It's so funny to be happy all the time. It's crazy. I wake up, and want to be awake!"

Home is a one-bedroom apartment near Hollywood Boulevard, in a Los Angeles neighborhood [t]hat's moving quickly from run-down to cool. She shares the places with Mouse - her chihuahua-dachshund cross - and her "beautiful" boyfriend Jimmi Simpson, also an actor. They met on the set of the aforementioned Stephen King min[i]-series, Rose Red. He's a quirky fellow who has also featured in Amy Heckerling's film Loser and episodes of the Keifer Sutherland series 24.

Lynskey has filled their apartment with New Zealand art, mainly from her other home, Taranaki. She ahs works by assemblage artist Dale Copeland, including a piece involving sardines and a handkerchief. She has beautiful works by New Plymouth artist and friend Sarah Sampson, a glitterly, velveteen map of New Zealand, and stacks of New Zealand music.

The Spanish-style apartment building with polished floors is ten thousand miles away from the tall, wooden Wellington villa that she dreams of one day owning, but it's home.

She guiltily confesses that the feeling of having two lives - one in New Zealand, another in the States - is starting to dissipate. "On my last trip home to New Zealand, I felt like I was missing 'home'! It sounds disloyal to say, but its because my boyfriend is here, my dog, my work is here, a lot of my friends are here.

"All my friends used to live in Wellington. Now they are all over New Zealand and the world. I think when there used to be that group, I felt like I was part of it. That I was the one thing missing from that place."

Years in Los Angeles have also helped her to fit in, to learn to speak American. It's not a case of having the right accent. Rather, it's a way of speaking with a purpose. "Americans are so competitive. When I first got here I was meek and shy and you have to be forceful." Not just at auditions, but in everyday life. Dinner party conversation in America may as well be an Olympic event. "So often in conversation, people have prepared stories," Lynskey laughs. "It's kind of like on American talkshows - they have a set format, and set anecdotes. It feels so artificial to me."

Though she has found that she is more independent than she ever thought she would be in Los Angeles, she also observes having lost a certain way of life. "When I was living in Wellington, people are just so relaxed there. You can walk around everywhere, make improm[p]tu plans, people call you from restaurants to say 'come on down'. It's so relaxed. You can see people all the time and have very accessible friendships. Here, you have to make a lunch date with one of your closest friends for the following week. People don't pop over or drop in."

She has introduced a bit of her Wellington way of life to her LA friends, though. "Now that I've been out here a while, I think because I'm more relaxed about things, I have friends calling to see if they can pop round - but even then they call ahead to say 'Is it still okay if I drop by?'!"

And New Zealand drops by. One of her four siblings has just been through for a ten-day visit - she entertained him by sending him to see friends of hers who were staying in flash hotels so that he could check out the fancy swimming pools. And Goodshirt passes through on their way to the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas earlier this year. "Passing through" is a bit of a misnomer: the entire band, plus manager and roadie, spent a week in her one-bedroom apartment. It's jsut[sic] as well Melanie, Jimmi and their friends are such huge fans.

"[Lead singer] Rodney Fisher has beenone of my best friends since we were ten when he gave me a sample vial of perfume from his mother's pharmacy. I'm so proud of them, they're doing really well. Rodney sent me and my boyfriend the demo songs from their next album, and its the best CD I've heard in my life." You heard it here first.

Lynskey usually stocks up on New Zealand music and art on her visits home. She thinks a best friend's wedding on Waiheke Island will be her next chance to catch up on the latest music, and she asks what's good at the moment. I recommend a few local websites where she can not only listen to the latest sounds from home, but buy them too. "Can you do that?!" Later, she emails to say that she sapent all night on Smokecds.com - "I don't know how I ever lived without it!"

Being a full-time CBS employee provides a good income for an actress used to doing one or two movies per year. Is she squirrelling it away or drinking champagne? A bit of both. "I go out for dinner a lot. I buy a lot of shoes. I mean, I live in a one bedroom apartment, I can't think about buying a house in LA, but I put money away so that one day I could buy a house in Wellington."

Which reminds me of a story in the Evening Post a few years back: "Heavenly Creature wants Wellington house". An odd little story, which didn't find much out. Yes, she wanted to buy a house, but couldn't afford one. Yes, she had been dating a Wellington man, but declined to name him.

"I know. There was this one period where I was home for a while and there was an article about me every week. It's so weird! My god! The things they were writing about me. There was this one time when I was 'sighted' in a restaurant with my 'new beau', apparently, and his glass of wine blew over the people next to us, and I was like "Oh my god, I'm sorry", and then it's in the newspaper?"

She recalls there was a fascination with exposing who her boyfriend was. They named one Wellingtonian, but alas for the media, that relationship was already over. They called another ex-boyfriend, Scarfies director Robert Sarkies. "They were like 'You're the boyfriend!' And he was like 'No! Too late!' Robert loves stuff like that, like he was playing a game with them. And he called me up and said 'They've found me! They think it's me!' Oh my god, how ridiculous. Why me?"

But it's the only time she's really been bothered by the media--New Zealand or otherwise - and she was more embarrassed than annoyed. The internet is different, of course. She has her fan-sites, mostly deferential. "My dad went and did a Google search on me once and said 'Oh, you know Mel, there are some, um, websites claiming to have, um, naked pictures of you. And I checked them out, and they're not. I thought you'd like to know that."

This low key fandom-at-a-distance may change. Word on the street is that Two and a Half Men could be big. With many of the long-running shows - ER, Friends, The West Wing - coming to an end, networks are desparate[sic] to get new shows off the ground. And television, being more accessible, creates seemingly more accessible stars. But Lynskey doesn't appear to have a palpable lust for fame, more a sense that this is her job and she's going to make the best run of it, for as long as she can.

She will have some time off to make films, and she's always keen to work in New Zealand. The girsl[sic] whose dream once extended only as far as Wellington's theatre scene would love to be invited down to do a play (although the thought of being on stage is secretly "terrifying").

Occassionally she puts pen to paper. "I used to write poetry a lot, but I haven't written any for a while because I'm too happy! It's like there's nothing to talk about. My boyfriend is amazing, my dog is beautiful, I"m working."

For now, Melanie Lynskey is relishing being that more satisfying of things - a full-time actor.