Top 15 Melanie Lynskey Quotes

I had a very old-school agent who was like, 'TV? That's for has-beens!'

I am quite shy sometimes. I do have some social anxiety. I am soft-spoken. But I'm quite ferocious. I think to be labeled as someone who is a pushover has been the hardest thing to get out of in terms of my personal and professional life.

When I read a script for the first time, I have to have something instinctive happen where I feel like that character is there somewhere. I have to hear a person, I have to feel them inside me in a way.

I very much want to be onscreen representing an interesting person who's not paying attention to what her tummy looks like ... If there were more people [onscreen] who look like me, then I wouldn't have to talk about it as much.

When I first came [to America], I watched a lot of movies. I couldn't afford a dialect coach. And so I just watched everything I could. I tried to learn a lot of different accents. And I'm an introvert, I'm an observer.

I was friends with Brittany Murphy, and the way she viewed herself was always really heartbreaking to me — the things she felt she had to change to be a successful actor. She was perfect just as she was, but people were trying to cast her as, like, 'the fat one,' because when she was a very young teenager, her cheeks were a little bit round. People tell you that you're a particular thing, and it's very hard to fight back against.

I started calling myself a character actor in interviews when I was really young because I think it was reclaiming the term or something. I think I just was like, "That's what I am."

I'm someone who cares very deeply about critics and what critics think. So I'm on Rotten Tomatoes, reading every single review. Like, I care, you know, I respect these people.

It's good in New Zealand to be humble; it's good to be a quieter person. And then you get to this place where everyone wants you to be brash and confident, and I just was like, 'I don't know how to do that!'

I said to [my] agency, I have a real problem being a size six — which is what I was at the time — and playing a chubby friend. I hate that these roles exist. I think it's damaging. It's weird for little girls to watch this movie and be like, 'Oh, she's supposed to be the fat one.'

People I hadn't heard from in years were getting in touch with me. I started to do some interviews, and then what I was saying in the interviews, people were paying attention to. It was a really hard, odd place to be for me. I was like, 'Oh, gosh, I've got to start watching myself, because I have no filter.'

I once auditioned to play Janis Joplin and I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat thinking that there's a tape of me auditioning to play Janis Joplin out there somewhere... so mortifying. It was when I was younger, and was auditioning for everything, so there were roles that I would go for that didn't resonate with me, in my soul, and that was torturous. I mean I wish Janis Joplin was in me, but she really isn't.

It's a lot easier to stay under the radar, have people be like, 'You should get more attention, you should have more roles' or whatever. It's weird to have been doing this for 30 years and then all of a sudden [find fame]. I didn't think this would happen. I thought if it was going to happen, it would happen in my 20s. So I'm grateful, and it's really nice to have choices. But it feels vulnerable.

I have this sort of weird thing where people know me from one [project] and then think I've never worked again. And they'll say, "Do you ever think about acting? Do you think about acting again?"

I made a movie last year [which] cost $50,000. I'm willing to do stuff like that. I basically worked for free. Whereas other people have requirements.