Rose Byrne: Mortician, lawyer and single mom, all in one!

“I don’t know, I guess you get cast in one thing, and then it’s pretty straightforward,” says Byrne, discussing her recent streak of gloom-and-doom projects. “They see you and go, ‘Wow, she can do that, let’s get her to do this,’ and then it’s just up to you as a performer, your agents and your ambitions to be seen in other lights. I’ve really enjoyed the darker stuff like working with Danny Boyle on SUNSHINE and 28 WEEKS LATER, or with Wolfgang Petersen on TROY. I’ve been lucky. But, yeah, I do tend to get these ‘end of the world’ kind of things—I’m the girl to come to.”

Full interview can be found here.

It’s been a long day of Toronto press interviews for Knowing – Byrne’s new movie with Nicolas Cage, which opened yesterday – and it comes hard on the heels of four days of the same in New York.

It’s quite a leap in casting for the 29-year-old Byrne, best known as lawyer Ellen Parsons on TV’s Damages, starring Glenn Close.

On the big screen, Byrne has gone from a sexy and scheming mortician in Just Buried to single mom of a 10-year-old in the sci-fi thriller Knowing.

“Really different,” Byrne says of the characters, her native Australian accent jarring a bit, coming from an actor who does American accents so flawlessly on film and TV. “That role in Just Buried was so fun. She was such a card – that was bent – but very different to Knowing in every sense of the word.”

Rest of the interview can be found here.

Australian actress Rose Byrne, 29, has the unusual distinction of being in two recent movies that involve a common enemy – the sun – threatening life on Earth. First, she appeared in “Sunshine,” “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle’s 2007 sci-fi thriller, and now she stars alongside Nicolas Cage in Alex Proyas’ “Knowing,” an apocalyptic tale involving a string of numbers, a pair of single parents and the newest and hottest global menace, solar flares.

“I know,” Byrne says, chuckling over the phone from New York, where she’s lived for the past two years, “Maybe it’s because I’m a Leo?”

Leo is a “fiery” sign, she notes.

Rest of interview can be found here.

A huge thank you to Bill for the heads up on these wonderful interviews! :mrgreen: