Born May 16, 1977 in New Plymouth, New Zealand (incidentally, this is also my mother's birthday. But you don't care about that).
New Plymouth, New Zealand, 1993. Melanie Lynskey is a happy teenager going through her Gothic period (which got Peter Jackson & co to save a lot of money on hairdye for Pauline's role: Melanie's hair is naturally auburn, but she had already tainted it black) and enjoying fantastic grades in many subjects. She's already into acting through schoolplays, and apparently this is where the Melanie-Lynskey-Hate-Club began as some part of a joke I do not get. No really, she's getting bored in an all-girl school with uniforms (I tell you HC can't have been that hard to play), and the only fun she has is in acting. Thank god.
Suddenly! Fran Walsh steps into her life, driving a Ford Cortina. Click here to read all about it and more on the whole HC-adventure (there's a Peter Jackson & Fran Walsh interview after the script - I once wrote it should be on a separate page by 1999. Those were the non-lazy days)
Then we're set for many, many weeks of Heavenly fun with Kate Winslet, Peter Jackson, Sarah Peirse, Jean 'Orson Welles' Guérin, and everyone from the Heavenly crew.
A few months later Heavenly Creatures premiered in Wellington, New Zealand and Melanie went back to school. She then took English Literature at the university (Wellington's Victoria University that was. Cool name for a uni don't you think ? Haha), but never lost sight of the movie industry, which didn't forget her either as Peter Jackson offered her a cameo role in his latest film The Frighteners, which followed Heavenly Creatures.
Later on she was contacted by writer/director Mark Tapio Kines, who had "discovered" her through the Internet (hey!) while searching for the perfect actress to play the part of Melody, the lonely young woman in the first story of his film Foreign Correspondents. She was his first choice, and basically his last. Proving once more how committed she was to her acting career, Melanie gave her consent and flew down to LA to star in Mark Tapio Kines' first film Foreign Correspondents "even though he only had forty thousand dollars".
Meanwhile she also managed to star in a play staged in Wellington, New Zealand. This is March 1997 and the play was Jean Genet's The Maids, which could have been a little worrying (Melanie Lynskey getting cast for weird-lesbian-roles only). But history proved I was worried about nothing.
Los Angeles, July 1997. Melanie is shooting Foreign Correspondents and it's all going astonishingly well. She even finds time to get her first role in a Hollywood picture. For all you supersticious people and figure-lovers out there, the audition was on July 13 :)
Somewhere in the South of France, September 1997. Melanie Lynskey is shooting EverAfter with Drew Barrymore and Angelica Huston and spends four gorgeous months doing that. This is her first Hollywood picture (the one I told you about).
Melanie's career is finally taking off and gaining more and more speed as we speak. She gets another part, this time in The Cherry Orchard, adapted from Anton Chekhov's original play. The film is directed by Michael 'Zorba the Greek' Cacoyannis and stars Katrin Cartlidge, Alan Bates, and Charlotte Rampling. Shooting is completed in Bulgaria by June 1998.
Summer of 1998: Ever After does extremely well at the US box office. Not that we Melanie-fans pay attention to such unelevated preoccupations as money, but this can only be good news for Mel.
And in fact, it was, as Mel got herself a part in the upcoming comedy Detroit Rock City, starring Edward Furlong, Natasha Lyonne (Everyone says I love you, Slums of Beverly Hills), and the band Kiss! And production wrapped on December 5, 1998.
Which allowed Mel to start on her new film , American as well, and sounding very much like an indie flick. The film is But I'm a Cheerleader! (I like the title, hehe). All this info comes from the IMDB, and here's the plot :a naive teenager is sent to rehab camp when her straightlaced parents and friends suspect her of being a lesbian. Could be either loads of fun or very dumb-and-actually-prejudiced, but let's see how it goes. And thank you very much to the HC mailing list, journalist-to-be Marloes (hahaha, she's gonna kill me for this), and Mark Tapio Kines, who got me started on this info. You guys are great! Oh yes, and this film stars Natasha Lyonne, again. Either they get along fine or it's just a coincidence. Naaah, gossip is better...
Actually it seems that the tragic gap that occurred in her career after Heavenly Creatures is getting filled till it bursts, as Mel just won't stop getting involved into more and more films (and a big hi to everyone at Lyon 2, specially those in LLCE Anglais! Hi there! Tough life isn't it ?) :-))))))
Now Melanie wouldn't be a star (what ? What's that doubtful look ? Leave that at once!) if there weren't any rumours about her... So, there was this rumour started at the IMDB that she was to start a new film called Mansfield Park, with a total dream-cast apart from Mel (= Johnny Lee Miller, pretty cool that would have been eh ? Not), but more amazingly too-perfect-to-be-true, written and directed by Patricia Rozema, as in When-Night-Is-Falling-Patricia Rozema (don't click if straightlaced parents or friends are watching. Well maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit. You wouldn't be sent to forced labour I think). Anyway my eyes were nearly popping out when I read this in the IMDB, and quite rightly they were, cos it has been totally unconfirmed. And so, Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home... And Mel is not going to do Mansfield Park. Nor is anyone, I think (maybe I should check it. Aaaah I feel too lazy). Anyway, keeping my eyes opened for more spoofs and more on the Melanie story later!
More on The Life of Melanie Lynskey: for all stalkers out there, Melanie is currently in London (valid on April 9, 1999 - I decline all responsibility for untruthfulness of this at another date). You would also like to know that she is currently with her boyfriend Andrew Howard (aaaaaaaaaaaah! My god! A boyfriend! No! It's the Kate-Winslet-nightmare starting all over again! Is he an assistant director ?) - Now relax, this one was met on the set of The Cherry Orchard (aaah, Bulgaria in springtime...) and is a Welsh actor (oh, so that's the kinda London-connection). And he plays Trofimov in the film. And now I have to re-read the play, cos I can't remember who Trofimov is. Possibly one of Duyasha's (ie Mel) suitors. But now is he the one that actually ends up getting her or one of the unlucky ? Ha this must be cleared up.
And cleared up it has been: He doesn't play one of her suitors, just a student who's dating the youngest daughter of the cherry orchard owners.
May 27, 1999. The exams are over at Lyon 2 (ie my uni). Have been for over a week now. I'm in my room, doing NOTHING, and just basically waiting for the day to go by while I lay there, montionless. Footsteps in the hallway wake me from my lethargy. A letter is slipped under my door. Big AIR MAIL sticker on the envelope. For a second I think I recognize my first girlfriend's handwriting (she's cycling around Europe with three other friends, could be her) - but no. I turn it over to read, in black ink: sender: Melanie Lynskey.
The shock was too great to have penetrated my mind (only this was about a good thing). Then it all became pretty much a daze which I can't really remember, except that I nearly knocked my neighbour's door down to tell her the news (even though I had never told her of Melanie Lynskey, so that needed a little bit of explanation). Anyway, I just had a wonderful day after that. So now, bits and pieces of the letter will be found in the site as updates, and what can I tell you... That she is really that great. Really so lovely and incredibly easy to write to and to read. It feels so good to realize we're fans of the right actress, so to speak. :-), though no smiley could really say what that letter meant to me.