Melanie Lynskey speaks about the pressure she faced to look a certain way in the 2000 flick “Coyote Ugly” in a candid interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Lynskey starred as lead character Violet Sanford’s (Piper Perabo) best friend Gloria in the movie.
Lynskey and some of her “Yellowjackets” co-stars discuss in the new interview the expectations they faced as young women starting out in the industry.
The actress shares, “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.’ My agents had all that kind of intensity around it, too. I remember when I did ‘Coyote Ugly’… I played the best friend from Jersey.
“But the scrutiny that was on Piper [Perabo], who’s one of the coolest, smartest women, just the way people were talking about her body, talking about her appearance, focusing on what she was eating,” she continues.
Lynskey goes on, “All the girls had this regimen they had to go on. It was ridiculous. I was already starving myself and as thin as I could possibly be for this body, and I was still a [size] 4. That was already people putting a lot of Spanx on me in wardrobe fittings and being very disappointed when they saw me, the costume designer being like, ‘Nobody told me there would be girls like you.’
“Really intense feedback about my physicality, my body, people doing my makeup and being like, ‘I’m just going to help you out by giving you a bit more of a jawline and stuff.’ Just the feedback was constantly like, ‘You’re not beautiful. You’re not beautiful.’ In your early 20s, so much of it is about beauty, and how people respond to you, and do people want to f**k you? Do people think you’re their best friend? Even the best friend thing, I started to be like, ‘I don’t want to do that too many times.'”
After noticing the attention surrounding her quotes, Lynskey took to Twitter to clarify who exactly she was talking about:
Just nervous that people will google “Coyote ugly costume designer” and think that Marlene was not nice when she was just the greatest
— Melanie Lynskey (@melanielynskey) August 3, 2022
Sorry for any confusion I may have caused- if I ever talk about a bad experience I’ve had I’m pretty careful about people not being able to identify who did those things as I am not in the business of publicly shaming people. I’ll talk about my experience without including that
— Melanie Lynskey (@melanielynskey) August 3, 2022
Adam Garcia, Tyra Banks, Maria Bello, John Goodman, Izabella Miko, and Bridget Moynahan also starred in the much-loved film.
Lynskey’s latest comments about body shaming come after she revealed she’d been fat-shamed by someone on the “Yellowjackets” production staff in an interview with Rolling Stone.
“They were asking me, ‘What do you plan to do? I’m sure the producers will get you a trainer. They’d love to help you with this,’” recalled Lynskey, who revealed that Juliette Lewis even wrote a letter to the show’s producers about the incident while explaining how her co-stars offered their support.
