Melanie Lynskey filmography



New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey made her film debut in 1994 when she played teenage murderess Pauline Parker in Heavenly Creatures, a crime drama directed by Peter Jackson. Following a hiatus, she resumed her career with a supporting role in the fairytale romance Ever After (1998), and spent the next few years appearing in a variety of big-budget and small-scale features, such as Detroit Rock City, But I'm a Cheerleader (both 1999), Coyote Ugly (2000), Snakeskin (2001), Abandon (2002), and the commercially successful romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama (2002).

Lynskey appeared as Rose, the conniving love interest of Charlie Harper, on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men between 2003 and 2015. During this time she played supporting parts in Shattered Glass (2003), Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Sam Mendes's Away We Go, Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (all 2009), Win Win (2011), and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012). Her starring role as a depressed divorcee in Hello I Must Be Going (2012) proved to be a turning point in Lynskey's career, with headline parts in dramedies such as Happy Christmas, Goodbye to All That (both 2014) and The Intervention (2016) coming next, establishing her as a prominent figure on the American independent film scene. For her portrayal of a disgruntled vigilante in the 2017 thriller I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, she was nominated for the Gotham Award for Best Actress.

Lynskey starred as a conflicted housewife on HBO's Togetherness from 2015 to 2016, earning praise and a Critics' Choice nomination. She then appeared as an ambitious defence lawyer in the Australian drama series Sunshine (2017), a troubled psychic on Hulu's Castle Rock (2018), a conservative activist in the FX miniseries Mrs. America (2020), and real-life murder victim Betty Gore in the Hulu miniseries Candy (2022). Her transition to mainstream success continued with her role as a put-upon wife in the 2021 film Don't Look Up, as well as her portrayal of Shauna, a secretive plane crash survivor, on the Showtime thriller series Yellowjackets (2021–present), for which she won the 2022 Critics' Choice Award for Best Actress and was nominated twice for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress (2022, 2023). She received a further Emmy nomination (Outstanding Guest Actress, 2023) for her role as a ruthless war criminal on the first season of HBO's The Last of Us.