The 'Yellowjackets' star opens up in a new clip about how her daughter spurred her be kinder to her body after a miscarriage.
When it comes to body acceptance, Melanie Lynskey has a powerful message.
In a new theSkimm clip exclusively shared with ET, the Yellowjackets star opens up about her own journey to body acceptance and how a miscarriage ultimately led her to be less hard on herself.
"It’s been a very long journey," she says of getting to a good place with accepting her body. "I fought against it for a very long time -- the shape that my body’s supposed to be."
The 45-year-old actress, who has been working in Hollywood for nearly three decades, admits that it's "hard to be a size 10 next to a size 0."
"I spent many years not really eating," she shares, "and being very worried about what I look like."
In 2018, Lynskey became a girl mom, which later influenced her outlook on her body. "A couple of years ago, I had a miscarriage and I just didn’t really recover from it physically," she recalls, "and having a very young daughter made me really think about -- OK, I need to be kinder to myself and accepting and saying sorry to my body for what It just went through and giving my daughter a positive example of what it looks like to have a mother who just is accepting her body."
Through her work -- including notably her recent performance on the Showtime hit -- Lynskey is bringing more positive body diversity to the screen in a purposeful way.
"It was really important to me for [Shauna] to not ever comment on my body, to not have me putting a dress on and being like, 'I wish I looked a bit better.' I did find it important that this character is just comfortable and sexual and not thinking or talking about it," she previously explained to Rolling Stone about choices for her Yellowjackets character. "Because I want women to be able to to watch it and be like, ‘Wow, she looks like me and nobody’s saying she’s the fat one.' That representation is important."
As she tells theSkimm, "I just think it's good for women to get to see different shapes and sizes... I want to be representative of what a lot of women in the world looks like."
And it's working. “I really appreciate people reaching out to me. I’ve gotten so many messages from women who feel very represented and seen by things they’ve seen or just by seeing my body onscreen,” Lynskey told ET in February about connecting with fans on Twitter. “And that’s so beautiful. I wish I could reply to everybody.”
theSkimm's interview with Melanie Lynskey will be available @theskimm on Instagram and theSkimm.com today at 4pm ET.
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