Melanie Lynskey revealed during a group interview with her Yellowjackets costars that her long history of experiencing body shaming and disordered eating began while filming ‘Coyote Ugly.’
Lynskey has a heartwarming tendency to look out for and recognize others during her moments of triumph , but she’s also faced issues that would make most of us need some support of our own. Sadly, this has often come in the form of body shaming from those who couched their scrutiny in so-called “concern” for her weight.
But not only was this kind of talk something that neither her husband nor her fans would stand for, but Lynskey revealed in a recent interview that it’s something she’s experienced from within the industry for most of her professional career.
And in a recent interview in the company of her Yellowjackets costars, Lynskey shared the painful chapter where it all started.
Be advised that this article contains discussions of eating disorders
On July 27, Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, and Tawny Cypress sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the struggles they’d overcome throughout their acting careers.
And during that interview, some of them reported quickly figuring out that terms like “character actor” and “quirky” were ways for studio executives to imply that an actress wasn’t considered beautiful enough to be a leading woman.
As Lynskey put it, “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.'”
But while these labels and narrow standards of beauty have long dogged her career, she reported that it was particularly hard while filming the 2000s movie ‘Coyote Ugly.’
She revealed that all of the actresses in that film had to undertake a grueling regimen to keep their bodies in the shape that the studio desired. And despite the fact that she starved herself until her body was as thin as it could be, Lynskey said she was treated differently for being a size four.
In her words, “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.'”
She continued, saying, “Just the feedback was constantly like, ‘You’re not beautiful. You’re not beautiful.'”
She described these struggles continuing as her career went on in an earlier interview with Vulture , in which she said,”I kept getting reminded I was not the things you needed to be. Thin, confident, pretty. Mostly thin.”
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This led to an eating disorder that saw her limit her caloric intake to 800 a day and purging herself when she eclipsed that limit.
This practice finally started to stop after an intervention by Andrew Howard, the boyfriend she was seeing while filming The Cherry Orchard . She said his serious discussion with her changed her life.
But considering how long she dealt with these experiences before she started to appreciate her body, Lynskey shared that she felt compelled to protect her younger castmates in ‘Yellowjackets’ from the same treatment.
As she told The Hollywood Reporter while tears formed in her eyes, “At the beginning of production, I sent them all an email, and I just was like, ‘Whatever you need, if you need a voice, if you need someone to go to the producers for you, whatever you need,’ and they were kind of like, ‘Cool. Thanks.’ They’re fine.”
