Rose Byrne may be best known for the comedic sharpness she brought to films such as Bridesmaids (2011), Neighbors (2014) and Spy (2015), but her work in recent years has taken her into more complex territory: the interior world of motherhood and its complicated, often unilluminated corners.

Born in Balmain, a suburb of Sydney, Byrne began acting in Australian series like Heartbreak High and Echo Point before making the leap to international productions, including Troy (2004) and Marie Antoinette (2006). She landed her breakout role opposite Glenn Close in Damages in 2007, playing Ellen Parsons, an ambitious young lawyer pulled into a world of power plays and ethical issues. These early roles established her range; the years since have shown the depths Byrne can mine.

In Physical (2021), she played a woman whose aerobics empire rises out of her frustrated search for independence outside of raising her family — a story that doubled as a look at the wellness boom as a path to female agency. And in Platonic, the comedy series that reunited her with Neighbors co-star Seth Rogen in 2023, she stepped into the role of a stay-at-home mother figuring out how to return to the workforce. “So many of my girlfriends have watched that and go ‘Oh my god, that is me,’” said Byrne. 

Her latest film, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, is a raw portrait of a woman pushed past her limits. It’s the kind of project that feels perfectly aligned with the path Byrne has been carving, showing the emotional labor women perform constantly and often without acknowledgment. Byrne plays Linda, a burned-out mother caring for her seriously ill child while trying to keep her job as a therapist. Shot often in very close-up angles by director Mary Bronstein, the film traps viewers inside Linda’s overwhelmed nervous system. Beeping medical machines, a crackling baby monitor, the constant barrage of questions shouted by her child, food squishing – it’s cinematic claustrophobia. By the end, viewers feel as if they’ve run a marathon just by living a few days in Linda’s chaotic life. For her performance, Byrne was nominated for a Golden Globe for best female actor in a musical or comedy.

Byrne’s dry, perfectly timed delivery cuts through the tension, offering the film’s few moments of reprieve while grounding the story with the disarming humor she’s long been known for. It’s a performance that stretches her, and the audience, to the limits.

CAITLIN HENNESSY What first drew you to the character of Linda?

ROSE BYRNE It was such an opportunity. The screenplay was unlike anything I’d read. It was very much like the film: full of tension, a very specific tone, a lot of dark humor in there. Mary really had something to say. I was simultaneously absolutely terrified of where to begin and also [wondering], ‘Are you sure you’ve sent it to the right person? Were you trying to get someone else?’ You know, the Australian in me, the constant underdog… But it’s an opportunity, right? Mary and I have so much in common. She trained as an actress before she started writing and directing her own work, she’s a mom, and we hit it off immediately. 

C.H. How did you prepare to live in Linda’s anxious brain? 

R.B. Well, we had this extraordinary opportunity to rehearse. It was this prep that I think, particularly for an indie film or any TV show or film, is really rare. Mary and I had five weeks where I would go to her apartment three days a week and we went through the script from page one. Mary loves to rehearse, she’s really driven by moving performances and has such a unique, punk take on the world. She is a force of nature. This film was made through her sheer tenacity.

But the gift was this rehearsal period. I’m a curious question asker, so I got to ask a million questions every day, and she was so candid with me. This is a personal story, it’s something she went through with her own daughter, who is now well and great. But she had something to say, and the film is a feeling of someone who is trapped. 

C.H. Linda is constantly trying to escape: from her problems, her environment and even herself. How did you balance making people feel sympathetic toward her, even when her actions are extreme?

R.B. My obsession was, who was this character before? Who was this person before she was a mother? There’s such a delineation between before and after parenthood, and there’s also a grief around that, too. Because you are never going to be the same, and women are generally not allowed to acknowledge that or say that, because it’s taboo, it’s full of shame, and yet it shouldn’t be because it’s true. And if you don’t acknowledge it, it’s going to come out in other ways anyway. Of course, it’s a great joy, and it’s so nourishing, and the gift is a healthy child. But there is a grief around motherhood, too, and the film addresses that.

In any case, it was like figuring out Linda before we meet her. It was technical in a lot of ways, because we shot the film in 27 days. Once we got to set, we’d had all the conversations. I had rehearsed with Conan [O’Brien], with [A$AP] Rocky, with Danielle [Macdonald], and we’d had big meetings with the hair and makeup and costume departments, because Linda disintegrates throughout the film. We had charts everywhere, because she’s drinking, she’s smoking, she’s doing drugs, so we were tracking all of those things, too. We could not have been more prepared, which is how I like to work. Everybody’s so different, some actors don’t want to rehearse, and I have total respect. Everyone has a different creative process. But in this case, I over prepared. I was like, I cannot fuck this up. 

C.H. I was wondering about the choices of the costuming and hair and makeup, because I noticed she had tattoos and an undercut as well. Was this to show who she was before she was a mom?

 R.B. I love that you noticed. I have very strong feelings about an undercut, and that is why I did it. I feel very seen. [Laughs] It is such a strong choice for somebody who has that at a certain age, so I felt it was a very funny reveal. I have a friend who has that haircut and I was like, that’s kind of who she is. There was a little bit of my friend in this character, so I stole a little bit. 

We wanted to hint at a past in Linda through some visual cues, and that is the hair, the tattoos. At the beginning, she’s trying to present herself and trying, valiantly, to get up every day and put on makeup and get dressed and go to work. And then, slowly, she gives up. The lowest priority of her day is doing that, and she’s barely functioning. By the end, we wanted her to look like a teenager who was at a rave, who couldn’t find her way home, in a bad band T-shirt and greasy hair. That was our vision. So it was very fun piecing that together. A friend of mine has this terrible tattoo on her arm that she got when she was 21, she doesn’t even know what it means – it’s like some kind of symbol – and I was like, that’s one of the tattoos. So I was sourcing ideas like that. We wanted to capture someone who’s a bit punk and who does not like being told what to do, who has a lack of trust in authority, who is someone who comes into a party, who’s going to be a good time but who you wouldn’t want to spend too much time with. 

C.H. You’ve played a few characters recently who show those unspoken moments of motherhood viewers aren’t used to seeing. What draws you to those types of characters?

R.B. I have been so spoiled because I have had these opportunities recently, as I’ve gotten older, to portray these rich and diverse experiences of being a parent. Something like Platonic which is very broad and really fun, where the joke is the most precious part of that role and show. The tone is obviously so different to what we’re doing [here], but it’s still a very relatable example of being a parent and trying to get back into the workforce. So many of my girlfriends have watched that and go, ‘Oh my god, that is me.’ It’s an experience women go through that has been a joy to bring to screen. That character is chaotic and impulsive, and can be questionable with some of her choices, and you still root for her. I loved playing that. 

C.H. Before becoming a parent, did you feel prepared for those unspoken, complicated moments of motherhood?

R.B. Honestly, I don’t think anything can prepare you for motherhood. It’s sort of like going to the moon. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m on the moon, I didn’t know I was on the moon, and no one told me I was going to go to the moon, and I’m here so I better figure out how to survive.’ Gosh, everybody’s experience postpartum is so different. But I did say to a good girlfriend of mine, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ and she was like, ‘I couldn’t, I didn’t want to scare you.’ It’s true, women are scared to scare [other] women about it. Also, one woman’s experience can be suffering severe postpartum, another woman can have a much easier time. It’s such a varied experience. I think it’s so wonderful that we’re voicing it and seeing these examples. I mean, there are fantastic films this year with performances dealing with different parts of postpartum or losing a child and that speaks to me, that there is a collective consciousness going on about these stories, and that there are stories to tell. 

C.H. How did you feel when you finally saw the film?

R.B. It was interesting. I felt as though I had been strapped into a roller coaster. I knew what Mary was doing, I knew that camera work, but you can’t really fully appreciate the language and the vision she had entirely until I saw it all together. It was kind of the most arresting, compelling experience and, in a way, a success, because I could disassociate from myself. I mean, the character is the film and the film’s the character, but the language around what she was doing was so compelling and extraordinary. I felt disassociated enough to kind of careen through it. But it was wild, I stumbled out of the theater in shock by myself. A24 stared at it completely mute.

C.H. Yeah, I can imagine with the addition of the sound it’s just all consuming.

R.B. I’m so glad you brought that up. It is so specific, and affecting, and Lynchian. And she’s playing with you, too, she’s turning it up. When she goes to screenings at festivals, Mary’s always checking to make sure that the volume is higher, because they’re always turning it down. But they’re in Linda’s perspective of the world, and for her, everything is louder and it’s wild.

C.H. Do you feel that this was one of your most challenging roles? Were there other roles where you felt really at capacity?

R.B. This role, yes, stretched me to my absolute, a place where I had not creatively been asked to go before or had the opportunity to go before. Technically, it really stretched me having the camera that close and figuring out performance with that aspect. Truly being just the POV of this character I was playing, that was an experience, one of those things where you’re asked to do things you’re not sure you can do. It’s changed me. 

C.H. I’d love to hear more about the start of your career. What made you decide to leave Australia?

R.B. I guess, looking back, it’s a step by step. I wanted to go to drama school, but I didn’t get in. So I did a bunch of other acting courses. I went to university and then, step by step, I worked in Australia. I got an agent in America. It was sort of chipping away. I’d come home and work a lot. I did a million tiny movies in Australia, and shows, and then slowly started to get more parts overseas. I think Australians, whatever they’re doing, have a natural wandering quality. We’re curious and we have a great tradition of going overseas for six months after school and backpacking. I saw my three siblings above me do that, so it’s already in us. We’re a tiny group of people, we are very far away, and we have such curiosity, and that was already innately in me to want to live and travel and work. I didn’t know if I could build a career that could sustain me doing that. Bit by bit, I had little turning points here and there and managed to piece together a career.

C.H. Looking back, what was the turning point from drama into comedy for you? 

R.B. I think you learn that you will get pigeonholed – if you do one role as a lawyer, you might then be offered 10 other parts that are kind of similar – and I had wanted to try to do something funny. I had done Troy and Damages and 28 Weeks Later and Sunshine, and then I got a little role in Marie Antoinette, which was really my first comedic role. It was a small part but it was a lot of improv. I was actively trying to change and do a different genre, not knowing if I could. I have a sense of humor, but most funny actors are very serious people. So it doesn’t track if you’re a funny person, you’re going to be a funny actor. Then I got a role in Get Him to the Greek, opposite Russell Brand, playing this bratty, self-indulgent pop star, and it was the antithesis of Damages. It was very broad and funny with ridiculous costumes and outrageous language and I just couldn’t have loved it more. 

All of a sudden, I felt creative permission to access a different part of myself and a performance that I was dying to do, and felt that, finally, I was allowed to. Because it’s that thing of getting the opportunity and getting the permission to do it. Now I admire people who just make their own work and direct, and I have a small production company and we try to do it. The key to an actor’s longevity is not waiting for permission, just allowing yourself to do it. For me, comedy felt like a liberation in a way and challenged me. Performance wise, it’s the same work, but on top of that, you have to get a laugh. 

C.H. The New York Times listed Bridesmaids as 32 in the top 100 films of the 21st century. Did you have a feeling the film would become as popular as it did?

R.B. You just never know. It was so extraordinary and rare to have these big scenes with so many women, because usually you’re the only female role. So that was the excitement. The big sequences with all of us were so fun, and it was a fantastic cast of women who were so welcoming to me. I was an interloper in many ways, because I wasn’t from UCB or Groundlings, I didn’t have an improv background. They were just so welcoming and funny and wonderful and warm and allowed me to stumble through. 

But it was extraordinary in the sense that, in real time, you were watching a performance that you knew was going to really change someone’s life and career, and that was Melissa McCarthy. All of us are going, ‘Something’s happening here, this is magic.’ And that’s not happened to me before or since, because it’s very rare. It was unbelievable, it was extraordinary. She was like our secret weapon, and then she was everybody’s after that. But for me working with Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph and Wendi [McLendon-Covey] and Ellie [Kemper] and Melissa [McCarthy]… I was such a fan of Kristen from Saturday Night Live, I could not believe that I got to do that role. I’m so grateful that I got to be a part of it, and the fact that it’s on the list! I think magic happened when we made it. But you never know and I’ve given up ever trying to predict it, because you can’t. That’s why this business is so hard. 

C.H. You’ve worked with extraordinary directors and co-stars. Did anyone offer some advice you’ve never forgotten?

R.B. It’s funny, I wish I had more sageness around me or memory of things like that. A friend did say to me once on a set that it’s important to look back to see how far you’ve come, because you can easily become cynical or not in the moment and that has stayed with me. And then I remember, on Marie Antoinette, sitting next to Judy Davis and I was reading a terrible trashy fiction novel. She said, ‘What are you reading?’ and I told her and she said, ‘Ugh, I gave up on fiction years ago,’ and I was like, that’s amazing. 

C.H. I do love a trashy fiction novel though.

R.B. It was literally, like, The Da Vinci Code. A terrible book.

C.H. Who is your Mastermind? 

R.B. I think it would honestly be my husband, Bobby Cannavale, who is really my sounding board. He has this kind of supernatural intuition. It’s his Cuban side, he’s a little witchy, and my kids are like that, too. But he’s an incredible sounding board creatively and, obviously, personally. He’s always my first port of call in everything. 

In lead image, Rose Byrne wears top and trousers by Louis Vuitton, stylist’s own shirt (worn underneath), socks by Falke and necklace and ring by Tiffany & Co.

Fashion by Xenia May Settel.
Hair by Esther Langham.
Makeup by Romy Soulemani.
Manicure by Maki Sakamoto.
Visual Editor: Suzy Alter.
Entertainment director: Ben Cercio.