How Did Rose Byrne Become One of Our Best Comedic Actresses?

We’re ten days away from Neighbors 2 unleashing itself on a public that may not be prepared for a sequel that very nearly lives up to the lofty standards that Neighbors set. And if you think that previous sentence is sarcasm, I suggest you check out Neighbors again; it’s one of the funniest and most generous comedies in recent years. And it was the rare comedy that made it a point to get the female lead just as involved in the shenanigans as the guys. For all Zac Efron’s flexing and Seth Rogen’s bumbling, Rose Byrne stole the show as Kelly, getting to keep her Aussie accent and play a character who actively rejects the “nagging wife” cliches that so many movies of the same sort would have saddled her with. And if you thought her character’s pregnancy would sideline her from the good stuff in Neighbors 2, I’m here to happily disabuse you of that notion. Byrne is once again the stealth MVP of the film, her zero-to-sixty holler put to fantastic use as Kelly and Mac grapple with concepts like escrow and Millennials with equal bafflement. Furthermore, if Neighbors had its egalitarian streak running just below the surface, Neighbors 2 wears it on its sleeve, making sure the women get to go just as hard as the men, if not harder.

So how did we get here? How did the meek handmaiden opposite Brad Pitt in Troy become one of the big screen’s most reliable comedic actresses? It’s one of Hollywood’s most interesting career paths. After starting out in Australian cinema — a career most notable for starring opposite Heath Ledger in Two Hands and winning the Venice Film Festival Best Actress prize for The Goddess of 1967 (which you can stream on YouTube) — Byrne made the jump to the States to play Natalie Portman’s handmaiden Dormé in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. An inauspicious beginning to her American career, to be sure.

2004 should have been her breakout year, as she starred in the psychological thriller Wicker Park and in director Wolfgang Peterson’s would-be blockbuster Troy. In both films, strangely enough, she played women paralleled with Diane Kruger, whose American career was also being kick-started that year to iffy results. Wicker Park at least gave Byrne the opportunity to play a Fatal Attraction-style semi-lead role, though no one saw the film. Far fewer people saw Troy than Warner Bros. had hoped (though its overseas box-office basically tripled its domestic take), which meant there was far less upside than expected for Byrne, playing the definition of a thankless role as essentially Bond Girl to Achilles. Even if she did get to film this sex scene with Brad Pitt at his all-time hottest.

In Variety‘s review of the film, Todd McCarthy wrote, “Byrne’s spoils-of-war chattel plays more as a convenient invention than as a woman who could possibly turn Achilles’ head and heart around.” So, yeah, Troy was not the springboard into superstardom it could’ve been.

For the better part of the next decade, Byrne would bounce around between dramas; some of them great (Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette; Danny Boyle’s Sunshine), some of them awful (ugh, Knowing). The connective tissue was that so few of them had good roles for her. For every tiny gem like The Dead Girl, there was a 28 Weeks Later which totally fizzled. In 2007, Byrne was the beneficiary of the 21st century’s greatest gift to actresses struggling to find a decent role in a movie: the cable television drama. FX’s Damages put Byrne opposite Glenn Close in an operatic battle of wills and loose ethics. The show was good for five seasons of employment and two Emmy nominations, and basically did everything for Byrne’s career that Troy did not.

Having firmly established herself in the dramatic realm, here’s where Byrne’s career really took a turn. There are so few occasions where the 2010 film Get Him to the Greek can be seen as pivotal, so lets all just appreciate this one. Not only did Byrne get to break out of her dramatic shell as over-the-top pop star Jackie Q, but she kicked off a professional relationship with producer Judd Apatow and director Nicholas Stoller that would change the course of her entire career. Not to mention that she completely walks away with every scene she’s in as the deliciously trashy Jackie (if you’re keeping count, along with the two Neighbors films, that makes her 3/3 as far as being the best thing about Nicholas Stoller-directed movies).

The next year, she teamed up with Apatow for Bridesmaids, at which point the game changed. As uptight, grandstanding, aggressively perfect Helen, Byrne was faced with the film’s toughest challenge: make this closed-off antagonist keep up with the likes of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Maya Rudolph, all while being the only major cast member not coming from a comedy background. McCarthy got the film’s Oscar nomination, but for my money it’s Byrne who gives the film’s best performance.

Byrne’s emergence as one of the brightest stars in the Apatowverse is all the more remarkable for her lack of a comedy background. Apatow has cast outside traditional comedy ranks before — Catherine Keener in The 40-Year-Old Virgin; Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up; Emily Blunt in The Five-Year Engagement — but Byrne’s the only one who kept coming back again. Her closest analogue is probably Kathryn Hahn, who toiled away on Crossing Jordan for over 100 episodes before finding her comedy niche in a big way.

Any doubts about Byrne’s massive comedic talent — and after Bridesmaids and Neighbors, you’d have to be pretty stubborn to still have doubts — were put to rest with 2015’s Spy, where she again steals the show as merciless terrorist Rayna. Byrne and McCarthy’s private-plane banter is the highlight of the film and could have gone on another 30 minutes as far as I’m concerned.

With Neighbors 2, this remarkable career arc continues. Few saw it coming, but how delightful that it happened.