Do we like Melanie Lynskey?
Our score: 8 out of 10. No harmful words or company turned up, and there is real, documented good, but the record on her wider politics is thin.
Lynskey grew up in New Plymouth, New Zealand, and was drawn to acting at about six. Her first screen role was Pauline Parker in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, while she was still in high school. She has said she auditioned thinking it would look good on her resume, which is a pretty modest way to describe an Oscar-nominated debut.
From there she built a career as the person you were always glad to see turn up: Drew Barrymore's stepsister in Ever After, Matt Damon's wife in The Informant, George Clooney's sister in Up in the Air. She also went home to make Kiwi films like Snakeskin. Years of that steady work later became Yellowjackets and The Last of Us.
The nearest thing to a scandal is one where she was on the receiving end. In 2022 she said a member of the Yellowjackets production team made body-shaming remarks and suggested a trainer. Co-stars Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress and Juliette Lewis backed her, and Lewis wrote to the producers on her behalf.
In 2023 a former reality-TV model criticised her casting in The Last of Us in a tweet since deleted. Lynskey replied that she was “supposed to be SMART, ma'am” and didn't need to be muscly. The model said she was criticising the casting, not Lynskey's body. Lynskey said the backlash only thrilled her.
On the harm test, we found nothing. No remarks about LGBTQ+ people, migrants or public health turned up, no harmful co-stars or studios in the work we checked, and no lawsuits or misconduct claims. What we did find leans the right way. She has called inequality “really obscene” and has volunteered as a driver for Project Angel Food, which delivers meals to people with HIV and AIDS. The gap is that she says little on politics, so that record is thin rather than spotless.
She has also used her platform for other women. She told the Today show she wants more on-screen representation of average-sized women and that responses from women have kept her going. That is a pattern across years, not a one-off post.