Rose Byrne

Mary Rose Byrne born 24 July 1979 is an Australian actress. She made her screen debut in the film Dallas Doll (1994), and continued to act in Australian film and television throughout the 1990s. She obtained her first leading film role in The Goddess of 1967 (2000), which brought her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and made the transition to Hollywood in the small role of Dormé in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002), followed by larger parts in Troy (2004), 28 Weeks Later (2007), and Knowing (2009).

Byrne appeared as Ellen Parsons in all 59 episodes of the legal thriller series Damages (2007–2012), which earned her two Golden Globe Awards nominations and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Get Him to the Greek (2010) and Bridesmaids (2011) established her as a comedic actress, in addition to the dramas and thrillers she continues to appear in.

Early life

Byrne was born in Balmain, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, and is of Irish and Scottish descent. Her parents are Jane, a primary school administrator, and Robin Byrne, a semi-retired statistician and market researcher. She is the youngest of their four children; she has an older brother, George, and two older sisters, Alice and Lucy. In a 2009 interview, Byrne stated that her mother was an atheist, while both she and her father were agnostic. Her family was described by The Telegraph as “close-knit”, and frequently kept her feet grounded as her career took off. “At one point one of my sisters had a word with me saying, ‘Watch yourself'”, she once remarked. “But they were really supportive.”

Byrne attended Balmain Public School and Hunters Hill High School before attending Bradfield College in Crows Nest. She later moved to Newtown and Bondi. Encouraged by one of her sisters, she began taking acting classes at age eight, joining the Australian Theatre for Young People. Growing up, Byrne experienced “plenty of rejection” from film schools. “I auditioned for a few of the big drama schools—Nepean, WAAPA, NIDA—and didn’t get in to any of them. I was really disappointed with myself. I wasn’t quite sure if I’d be legitimate without training for three years in a more traditional sense”. Instead, she studied an arts degree at Sydney University. “I still have great memories of those days: studying, working, auditioning. Just being a jobbing actor trying to figure out life after high school”. In 1999, Byrne studied acting at the Atlantic Theater Company, which was developed by David Mamet and William H. Macy.

Career

Beginnings (1994–2006)

Byrne obtained her first film role in Dallas Doll (1994) when she was 15 years old. Throughout the 1990s, she appeared in several Australian television shows, such as Wildside (1997) and Echo Point (1995), and starred as an alterna-girl love interest in the film Two Hands (1999), opposite fellow up-and-coming actor Heath Ledger. A role in the award-winning film My Mother Frank (2000) was followed by her first leading role in Clara Law’s The Goddess of 1967 (also 2000), which gained her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 57th Venice International Film Festival. Byrne revealed in a post-award interview that, prior to winning the Venice Film Festival Award, she was surprised by her own performance and found it confronting watching the film because her acting was “too depressing”. Byrne admitted that “watching myself is confronting because I’m convinced I can’t act and I want to get out, that’s how insecure I am.”

On stage, Byrne starred in La Dispute and in a production of Anton Chekhov’s classic Three Sisters at the Sydney Theatre Company. In 2002, she made her first appearance in a Hollywood film with a brief appearance as Dormé, the handmaiden to Natalie Portman’s Senator Padmé Amidala, in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. She also appeared in the 2002 thriller City of Ghosts, with Matt Dillon. Byrne had flown to the UK to shoot I Capture the Castle (2003), Tim Fywell’s adaptation of the 1948 novel of the same title by Dodie Smith. In it, she portrayed Rose Mortmain, the elder sister of Romola Garai’s Cassandra.

In 2003, Byrne starred in three Australian films; The Night We Called It a Day, with Melanie Griffith and Dennis Hopper; The Rage in Placid Lake, with Ben Lee; and Take Away, alongside Vince Colosimo, Stephen Curry, John Howard and Nathan Phillips. All films were comedies and opened to varying degrees of success at the box office, but The Rage in Placid Lake earned Byrne an AACTA Award nomination for Best Actress. In the epic drama Troy (2004), she took on the role of Briseis, the captured priestess presented to “amuse” Brad Pitt’s Achilles. Variety’s review of the film stated: “Byrne’s spoils-of-war chattel plays more as a convenient invention than as a woman who could possibly turn Achilles’ head and heart around”. In her other 2004 film release, the thriller Wicker Park, Byrne appeared, opposite Josh Hartnett and Diane Kruger, as the girlfriend of a young advertising executive’s old friend. Wicker Park director Paul McGuigan described her as the best actress he has worked with, and her Troy co-star Peter O’Toole described her as “beautiful, uncomplicated, simple, pure actress and a very nice girl”.

Byrne reunited with Peter O’Toole, playing a young servant, in the BBC TV drama Casanova (2005), a three-episode production about 18th century Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova. In 2005, she also starred with Snoop Dogg in The Tenants, based on Bernard Malamud’s novel. In 2006, Byrne portrayed Gabrielle de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac, a French aristocrat and friend of Marie Antoinette, in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, with Kirsten Dunst; and appeared as a medical examiner who thinks the dead woman she is prepping is her missing sister in the critically acclaimed thriller The Dead Girl, directed by Karen Moncrieff.

Breakthrough (2007–2011)

In 2007, Byrne had significant parts in two studio sci-fi thriller films. She played a space vessel’s pilot in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, alongside Cillian Murphy and Chris Evans, and also an army medical officer in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to Boyle’s 28 Days Later. While Sunshine flopped, 28 Weeks Later was a critical success and grossed over US$64.2 million globally. In 2007, Byrne would begin playing Ellen Parsons, a bright, young attorney, in the FX legal thriller television series Damages, alongside Glenn Close. Her performance was widely praised, with Byrne being nominated twice for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2009 and 2010, and twice for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries, or Television Film in 2008 and 2010. She played her role in all fifty nine episodes of the series and until its finale in September 2012.

Following starring roles in the 2008 independent films Just Buried, directed by Chaz Thorne, and The Tender Hook, with Hugo Weaving, Byrne returned to the mainstream with the role of the mother of a teen, alongside Nicolas Cage, in the sci-fi thriller Knowing (2009), which made US$186.5 million worldwide and met with mixed reviews. Back then, Byrne was not being strategic about her film choices. “You gravitate to where you want to go, but so much is out of your control”, she once remarked. After the success of Damages, she asked her agents to send her out for comedies. “I was doing all of this really heavy, dramatic stuff, and I just needed a break,” she stated. Her request was met when she obtained the role of a scandalous pop star and the on and off girlfriend of a free-spirited rock star in the comedy Get Him to the Greek (2010), also starring Russell Brand and Jonah Hill. Director Nicholas Stoller admitted that, in her audition, he thought: “‘Why is she here?’ Because, you know, very good actress, but very serious”. Nevertheless, he noted that Byrne “just destroyed Like, destroyed in the way that someone from Saturday Night Live would. And that was that”. The film was a commercial success, with a gross of US$60.9 million in North America.