Another independent dream comes true

Yet job offers are almost always the same: a fifth lead here,the best friend there. Shes 34 and was recently cast as Aunt Helen in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Cant shejust onceland the big,meaty,carry-the-movie role?

Its a question that Lynskey has thought about a lot in her 15 years of pounding the Hollywood pavement,and the answer usually boils down to this: those parts are written for men. Or Meryl Streep.

For a while I was only being sent fat-girl parts, Lynskey said. Seriously? Sometimes I feel like Im making some kind of radical statement because Im a size 6.

Like similarly frustrated talents before her,Lynskey has found a solution: Sundance. Last week,Hello I Must Be Going,a comedic drama incubated in the Sundance Institutes workshops,had its premiere at the opening night,and its 100 per cent her movie. Starring as a divorced,demoralised woman in her mid-30s,Lynskey for the first time in her career is in every scene.

Her character smokes pot,vomits,sobs,laughs,has sex,romps naked poolside (not in that order) and aggressively fights with her mother,played by Blythe Danner. In something like karmic payback for all of those unflattering roles she was offered,Lynskeys character attracts the obsessive romantic attention of a 19-year-old hunk (Christopher Abbott).

The lesson is be careful what you wish for,because its a lot of pressure, Lynskey said.

Independent film in general and Sundance in particular have been much,much kinder to actresses over the years than mainstream Hollywood. That is especially true this year. Joining Lynskey in the lineup are women like Rebecca Hall (The Town),and Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation),who stars in a romantic comedy called Celeste and Jesse Forever,which she helped write.

Already generating festival heat,is Leslye Headlands dark,over-the-top comedy,Bachelorette,which stars Kirsten Dunst as an ice-queen maid of honour,Lizzy Caplan as a crazed cocaine addict and Isla Fisher as the ditz of all ditzes. (No,its nothing like Bridesmaids.).

Lynskey,who grew up in New Zealand and has the accent to prove had her first role came in 1994 in Peter Jacksons surreal Heavenly Creatures,about two teenage girls who develop a creepily close relationship before retreating into an imaginary world; Kate Winslet co-starred.

Other indie roles have included an adoptive parent in Away We Go and George Clooneys younger sister in Up in the Air.

Her rhythms are really unusual,like her cadence and her reaction times to things,and the way she sort of lays out a sentence, Steven Soderbergh,who directed The Informant!,said of Lynskey. Its just really,really interesting.

Yet Lynskey,married to Jimmi Simpson,an actor,said she wasnt quite sure how she landed Hello I Must Be Going. Her agent called to say that she had been asked to do a reading. Then she didnt hear anything. I assumed they w aggie Gyllenhaal, she said. Then she got the call for a reading and the role was hers.

Im a character actress,and Im very grateful for all that Ive gotten to do, she told the 1,000 or so people after the premiere of her film. But this was just something that was so fully realised,a complete journey that this person makes. It felt like such a gift.