Toronto’s Triple Treat

New Plymouth-raised, Los Angeles-based actress Melanie Lynskey, 32, has roles in three of the most talked-about movies at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Her roles in Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, and Steven Soderberg’s The Informant! are “small, but pivotal” reported the Los Angeles Times’ Mark Olsen who also believes her film commitments could increase in the wake of these latest performances. “With her current run at the Toronto Film Festival and her onscreen mix of innocence and knowingness, sadness and hopefulness, it is likely that audiences may finally put together whatever became of that girl who did more than just hold her own opposite Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures,” reported Olsen. In The Informant! she plays the incredulous, loving wife who stands by her corporate whistle-blowing husband (Matt Damon) even as it becomes increasingly clear that he’s in over his head. For Up in the Air, she plays the sister of George Clooney’s troubled corporate hatchet man, her upcoming wedding causing him to reevaluate his priorities. And her character in Leaves of Grass is married to one of two brothers (both played by Edward Norton) and she persuades her husband to try to stop dealing drugs and go straight.