'Two and a Half Men' Are Plenty for Lynskey
By Jay Bobbin

The focus is on the fellows on Two and a Half Men, but women often are around, too.

One of the most consistent is charmingly obsessed neighbor Rose, played by Melanie Lynskey on the Monday-night CBS sitcom, the latest People's Choice Award winner for favorite new comedy series.

Rose's brief liaison with committed bachelor Charlie (Charlie Sheen) was much more to her, which is why she turns up continually at the house he shares with his divorced brother, Alan (Jon Cryer), and Alan's young son, Jake (Angus T. Jones). Ever an optimist, Rose hopes for another chance with Charlie; she doesn't even mind him using her as a convenient decoy to ward off other women.

Rose has yet another rival for Charlie's attention coming in May, as Heather Locklear (formerly Sheen's leading lady on Spin City) guest stars as Alan's attorney. She spends a night with Charlie, then wants him at her beck and call. It's an arrangement Charlie chafes under, leaving Alan worried about the possible impact the situation may have on him and Jake.

After making a big splash a decade ago in her first movie, the critically praised Heavenly Creatures (which also gave Kate Winslet international prominence), New Zealand native Lynskey worked steadily in movies from Ever After and Coyote Ugly to Sweet Home Alabama and Shattered Glass. She says she began considering U.S. TV series work last year because "on a practical level, I'd just gotten my green card. Before that, the time between being cast for a show and starting work on it was too quick to even get a work visa, so doing a TV show wasn't even an option.

"When I finally got my green card, I thought, 'Well, maybe I'll just see what's happening.' Last pilot season, I read some scripts but didn't go out for anything until I read Two and a Half Men. It made me laugh, and it was kind of perfect at the time because Rose was just a guest-starring role. There was no commitment whatsoever, so I thought it would be fun to go in and play this crazy woman once. It also would give me a taste of what it was like to do a sitcom. Then, when the show got picked up, the part was well-received and the producers asked me to be a regular."

Their plan to make Rose more than a one-note joke has worked, much to Lynskey's relief. "I've been getting a lot of fan mail," she says, "so people seem to be responding. Sometimes, I'll read one of the scripts and wonder, 'Is this more creepy than funny?' In one show, Charlie wakes up in the middle of the night and I'm in bed with him. If that happened to me, I would be horrified. Chuck [Lorre, co-creator and co-executive producer of the series] always tells me, 'Just play it really sweet and as if you're completely right. Then no one can blame you.'"

Indeed, Lynskey evokes a sweet demeanor on Two and a Half Men, matched with a lilting voice not far removed from Megan Mullally's on Will & Grace. Lynskey's American accent on the show belies her overseas roots, which are evident in regular conversation with her. She reveals Sheen didn't realize her background until they were making the show's second episode: "He turned around and said, 'What's this, uh, voice? What are you doing?' I said, 'I'm just talking.' Then he said, 'Hmmm. Is that some kind of actor-y thing?'"

Lynskey still enjoys being with Sheen, Cryer and the other series regulars as much as she did at first. "I can remember thinking while we were making the pilot, 'It can be this easy?' They don't have any egos, and it was just fun. I thought it would be a nice place to be." It's also a highly successful place, since Two and a Half Men is this season's third-highest-rated comedy (right behind its lead-in, Everybody Loves Raymond, with Friends topping the list). "It seems funny to me that it's all worked so well," Lynskey says. "I have so much respect for the people who do this. It's so hard to keep the energy up and to make people laugh."

Peter Jackson, the fellow New Zealander who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, gave Lynskey her big break by casting her as a murder-minded girl in Heavenly Creatures. She reflects, "I don't know what I would be doing today otherwise. I always wanted to be an actress, but to be in Heavenly Creatures at the age of 15 literally changed my life. It took a long time to get other jobs, because the character I played in that movie isn't someone you'd look at and automatically think, 'I can imagine her in my movie.'

"Also, I had no idea how to navigate Hollywood or the acting profession or anything like that. I finished high school and went to university and figured I'd come back and have another look later."

With that taken care of, Lynskey still retains solid connections from her earlier days. "Everyone who won Oscars for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King also worked on Heavenly Creatures," she reports. "I was crying my eyes out that night."