Melanie Lynskey, now 44, recalled being a youngster and the day when expertise scouts got here to her highschool to search for leads. Whereas “Heavenly Creatures” had a funds of solely $5 million, that was a hefty sum for a New Zealand manufacturing within the mid-Nineties. As such, there was numerous secrecy across the movie. Lynskey, as a substitute of studying pages or sides, recalled how she needed to showcase her abilities for improvisation:
“They got here to my highschool. There was simply in the future. Someone stated, ‘Oh, some individuals are right here auditioning for a film.’ And I believed, ‘Oh, it is a good factor to placed on my utility to drama faculty, to say I auditioned for a film, so I’ve that have.’ I do not know what I used to be pondering. However they have been taking individuals two at a time right into a spare room on the faculty. And so they did not wish to present anybody a script or something like that, so they only had us improvise.”
Lynskey wasn’t there to land any function — she was solely testing out what an actual audition felt like. She already had ambitions to be an actor however by no means dreamed that she would star in a function movie whereas nonetheless in highschool. She and a buddy went in with none expectations. It additionally helped that she and her buddy have been already taking improv classes. She stated:
“I used to be with my buddy Susie […] And we simply improvised a number of scenes collectively. And we, on the time, have been in a dramatic improv class that we did each single Friday night time. So we have been used to it. It was, you already know, type of second nature for us.”