Rose Byrne has been nominated for her first Oscar for her monumental performance in the black comedy, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. The announcement comes three weeks after a visibly shocked Rose accepted a Golden Globe with a touchingly unguarded speech, in which she expressed her deep gratitude to writer/director Mary Bronstein for creating the role.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” Rose said, clutching her statuette.
“You could see how genuinely shocked Rose was, too, and that made it all the more moving,” says artist George Byrne, Rose’s brother and date for the Globes. “I was having an out-of-body experience. It was all too much.”
“I’m so proud of her,” says Krew Boylan, Rose’s long-time friend and co-founder of Dollhouse Pictures. “Her winning… just made me go, ‘Oh my Gosh! Something is right in the world.”
Rose may have been surprised she won the Golden Globe, but the family and friends who have witnessed her decades of commitment and hard graft were not.
Early years
Rose fell in love with performing when she was just eight, after a neighbour suggested she join the Australian Theatre for Young People.
“She was always performing in some way,” George says. “Not in an overly theatrical sense, but she had a natural instinct for inhabiting characters and mimicking people. She was – and still is – a very funny human. It never felt like a phase; it felt like something she intuitively understood from early on.”
When Rose was 12, a casting agent came to an Acting for the Camera Class, looking for young people for an upcoming film. Rose attended a screen test and was cast in the offbeat comedy Dallas Doll, starring Sandra Bernhard.
“It was wild,” Rose said in a conversation with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation last month. “I got to work with Sandra. I was 13. It was an adventure.
“I just fell in love with it,” she continued. She wrote a journal entry about the seminal experience and remembers thinking, “Wow, if I could keep doing this, this would be extraordinary.”
Rose appeared in the short-lived soap Echo Point, then Two Hands opposite Heath Ledger and Bryan Brown. She auditioned for NIDA, WAAPA and the Victorian College of the Arts, but none of them accepted her.
“Rejection’s hard, but we all know that most of the job is not getting the job,” Rose said, laughing. “That was the beginning of all that.”
She had to re-evaluate, but it taught her resilience.
The Rise of Rose
On paper, Rose Byrne’s career looks like it has progressed on a sharp upward trajectory, but she had her share of hurdles. Her big Hollywood moment came when she was cast as Briseis in the swords and sandals epic, Troy, opposite Brad Pitt, Peter O’Toole and Eric Bana.
“I auditioned in Hollywood, and I read with Brad, and he was so sweet, and it was very surreal,” Rose told the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. The job was “very fun, very dramatic”, but didn’t lead to an influx of offers.
“After that, it was a quiet period,” Rose said. She moved to London, where her sister was living, to pursue theatre roles. “I did not have a good time in Los Angeles. I found it pretty hard; I found it lonely.
“Every time you expect something, you really shouldn’t.”
Breaking through
Things changed in 2007. Rose appeared in Sunshine, 28 Weeks Later and the prestigious TV legal drama Damages opposite Glenn Close. Conscious of being pigeonholed, she asked her agent to send her out for comedic roles. She auditioned many times before she landed the role of Jacqui Q in Judd Apatow’s Get Him to the Greek.
“Being the youngest, she was observant, quick and always finding ways to get a reaction,” George tells The Weekly. “Her comedy comes from sharp observation, timing and thousands of hours of Seinfeld.” Fawlty Towers was also popular in the Byrnes’ Balmain home when George and Rose were growing up.
Rose earned huge plaudits as the privileged Helen opposite Kristen Wiig’s Annie in Bridesmaids. When she received the 2015 AACTA Trailblazer award, Kristen Wiig sent a tribute.
“You’re one of my favourite people to work with,” Kristen said. “I think you’re amazing. So funny. I’m sorry, the only challenge you really have is in the looks department. You can’t have everything, Rose.”
Hard Graft
In 2016, Rose was seven months pregnant, driving across America to convince Dolly Parton’s manager, Danny Nozell, to read a script Krew had written about a Dolly Parton impersonator.
“She hired a car on the weekend and crossed the border to Tennessee,” Krew says. Rose “put the script in front of Danny and said, ‘We need Dolly; We need her support. We need her blessing. We need her music, please.”
Dolly read the script overnight and messaged the Dollhouse Team the next day. “She said she stayed up all night and read it twice,” Krew says.
“She was so kind and generous and responsive,” she says of Dolly. “Pretty similar to Rose herself, actually. Just great morals. Kind and generous and real and honest and trustworthy.”
Despite having Dolly on board, the film, Seriously Red, was eight years in the making for Dollhouse, whose other co-founders are director Shannon Murphy and producer Jess Carrera.
“We started Dollhouse because we were sick of waiting for the phone to ring,” says Krew. “There are so many different ways to get movies and TV made …we thought, we can do this.”
Rose appeared as an Elvis impersonator in Serious Red.
“I’m so up for holding her up and cheering her on and supporting her because she’s worked so hard,” says Krew. She “absolutely deserved” the Golden Globe. “I hope she wins the Oscar.”
Rose’s Golden Year
One year ago, almost to the day, a “tiny’ and “unbelievable” film (Rose’s words) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. “We shot this movie in 25 days for, like, $8.50,” Rose said of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.
It swiftly generated Oscar buzz. The Hollywood Reporter described Rose’s portrayal of Linda, the mother-on-the-brink, as a phenomenal tour de force.
In February, Rose was awarded the Silver Berlin Bear for best performance at the Berlin Film Festival. Clutching her trophy on stage, she said she was “flattered even to be here”. The prize was the first of many she would collect in the lead-up to the Oscars.
Rose also won the Critics Choice Award and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award. The London Critics Circle Film Awards named her Actress of the Year.
A fearless performance
At the National Board of Review awards ceremony, Paul Rudd praised Rose’s virtuoso acting. “Versatile is a word that’s often used to describe Rose,” he said. “With her tour de force performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, I’d like to offer a few more words: Fearless, tenacious, brilliant, iconic.”
George says Rose has always been fearless.
“She takes risks, commits fully and doesn’t protect herself in performances,” he said. “I’d also say disciplined and generous. This amazing role in If I had Legs I’d Kick You felt like divine timing, as it was the perfect and rare vehicle for her to showcase both her dramatic and comedic strengths in one package.”
At the Palm Springs International Film Awards, Rose, 46, received the breakthrough performance award, 38-years after her screen debut.
“Isn’t it hilarious?” says Krew. “I think making out with Brad Pitt is a breakthrough moment for any straight female, right?” She laughs, adding, “What a lovely thing to keep repeating itself, constantly being a breakthrough … I hope she’s still breaking through at eighty.”
