10 Reasons We Love Melanie Lynskey
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Melanie Lynskey is truly having ~A Moment~ right now, and it's extremely well-deserved (if not a bit past due). Here are just a few of many reasons to love the Yellowjackets star.
1.She's been landing interesting roles since she was a kid.
In her first-ever movie, Heavenly Creatures, she played Pauline Parker, a New Zealand teen who killed her mother with the help of her friend Juliet Hulme in the 1950s.
Since then, she's done everything from drama (Ever After) to comedy (But I'm a Cheerleader) to horror (Castle Rock). Most recently she's been killing it (no pun intended) in Yellowjackets, and will next star as Betty Gore, the victim of real-life killer Candy Montgomery, in a TV miniseries about their friendship.
Her CV tracks, considering the types of characters she's drawn to. She told PageSix back in 2011, "Even when I'm reading a script where I'm supposed to be looking at the lead role, I'll find myself gravitating toward some small weirdo in a few scenes instead."
2.She cares about telling unusual stories about unusual people.
Lions Gate Films
"I want to tell stories about women who are interesting and complicated and not like people you've seen before," she told the Los Angeles Daily News in 2017.
3.She also cares about portraying real women.
"A lot of women out there look like me," she said in a New York Times article about Yellowjackets. “That was really important to me.”
4.She doesn't stand for bodyshaming.
After a member of the Yellowjackets production team implied that she should lose weight for the show, she swiftly shut them down. She told Rolling Stone, "It was really important to me for [Shauna] to not ever comment on my body, to not have me putting a dress on and being like, 'I wish I looked a bit better.'"
She added, "I did find it important that this character is just comfortable and sexual and not thinking or talking about it, because I want women to be able to watch it and be like, 'Wow, she looks like me and nobody’s saying she’s the fat one,.' That representation is important."
5.She's committed to making the right choices for her characters.
She told The New York Times that there were times she had to tell the Yellowjackets writers that there were things she felt Shauna simply would not do.
"When I was about to go on a date with Adam," she explained, "they had me stealing a pair of my daughter’s underwear — like a thong — to wear. And I just was like, 'Guys, first of all, as a mother, no.' That’s so gross. I know that Shauna doesn’t have boundaries, but that’s, like, a step too far."
She went on to point out that the underwear wouldn't even believably fit her. "There’s no woman in the world that’s going to watch that scene and be like, 'I believe that she’s comfortably wearing those underpants,'" she said.
6.She stands up for people she cares about.
7.She's dedicated to setting a good example for her daughter.
8.She and her husband (and former costar), Jason Ritter, are super cute and funny together.
The cut @JasonRitter and I saw of episode 8 of Yellowjackets was very rough, with temp effects, etc. When the big plane explosion happened a subtitle said “debris falls from the sky” and he said “ooh, who’s Debris? Have we seen her yet? She survives!” Still laughing about it
9.She found a certain Yellowjackets scene just as hilarious as the rest of us did.
10.She geeks out over the TV shows and movies she loves as much as her fans geek out over her.
My husband got me this T-shirt for Christmas. It’s 10pm and our toddler is still up. This is exactly my mood (also, who has seen this deeply unhinged and insanely addictive show)
Suffice it to say, Melanie Lynskey is an international treasure and deserves many, many flowers.
@showtime / Via giphy.com
Don’t miss Sam Claflin in the new rom com Book of Love from BuzzFeed Studios, coming to Amazon Prime Video February 4th and Sky Cinema February 12th.
