Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet earned their acting breakthroughs together as the leads of Peter Jackson’s 1994 drama “Heavenly Creatures,” but the two actors grew apart in the years afterward as Winslet’s star power exploded with “Titanic.” On a new episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast (via Entertainment Weekly), Lynskey said losing her close friendship with Winslet was “painful.”
“When I lost touch with Kate, it was more heartbreaking than some breakups that I’ve had,” Lynskey said. “It was so painful and it wasn’t like anything happened, it’s just she became a gigantic, international movie star and she didn’t have a lot of time and then, suddenly, she’d be in Los Angeles and not have time.”
In a 2012 interview with Time magazine, Lynskey said the two actors had “a very intense” relationship. “It was more intense than some love affairs that I have had in my life,” the “Yellowjackets” actor said at the time. “We developed such a bond that for a long time we couldn’t let it go. We would write each other letters and talk on the phone all the time. We were in constant contact for so long.”
“Heavenly Creatures” stars Lynskey and Winslet as teenage girls whose intense friendship ends with the murder of one of their parents.
Speaking on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Lynskey said no one is to blame for the two actors losing touch. Their separation “gradually happened” over time as many friendships do.
“It happens in relationships,” Lynskey said. “People kind of drift apart, but that was so painful for me.”
Lynskey also remembered an unnamed actor with whom she felt she’d be lifelong friends with during filming, only for that actor to break things off almost immediately after production ended.
“I did this movie with this actor and when we were finished I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m just so happy that I met you and we have this friendship,'” Lynskey said. “And she said, ‘Yeah, I’m not friends with actors. I don’t stay friends with actors.’ And I was just like, ‘What?’ I was so shocked by it.”
“I was so sensitive,” Lynskey added, noting it took time for her to realize “we move on and this is just a couple of months of our life.” She concluded, “I was always so injured by losing these great loves I was having. It got easier.”
Watch Lynskey’s full appearance on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast in the video below.
