Rose Byrne Delivers Career-Best Performance in Dark Comedy If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Back in 2000, when she was just 21, the Australian actress won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her role in the indie film The Goddess of 1967. She later moved to the U.S., landed a part in a Star Wars movie, starred opposite Brad Pitt in Troy, and spent five seasons acting alongside Glenn Close in the legal drama series Damages (2007–2012), earning two Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations. After showing off her comedic talents in 2006’s Marie Antoinette, she went on to star in several major comedy hits, including Get Him to the Greek (2010), Bridesmaids (2011)—for which she shared a SAG Award nomination for Best Ensemble—and Neighbors (2014), which earned her a Critics Choice nomination.

Despite her impressive range, Rose Byrne, now 46, was pushed further than ever in her latest role—Mary Bronstein’s dark comedy If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which A24 began releasing in theaters last Friday. Vanity Fair recently called her “one of the most versatile and consistently watchable stars working today,” and this new film might finally earn her an Oscar nomination. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and later screening in Berlin, where Byrne took home Best Actress, the film tells the story of a woman whose life is falling apart—both literally and metaphorically.

Byrne appears in nearly every scene, often in intense, close-up shots. She plays Linda, a therapist with a difficult client (Danielle Macdonald), a colleague (Conan O’Brien) who’s running out of patience, a wife whose husband (voiced by Christian Slater) is out of town just as their apartment roof collapses, and a mother who ends up in a motel with her sickly daughter, surrounded by eccentric characters (including one played by A$AP Rocky). Director Mary Bronstein said she needed not just a great actress but someone who could express the tiniest emotional shifts with their face—and Byrne delivered exactly that.

Writing from Sundance, The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called her performance “riveting,” saying, “It’s a bruising performance that dives deep into the crushing pressure and isolation that can come with motherhood—more unflinching than Nightbitch, but not without empathy. You feel for Linda as she fights to keep it together while the men around her can’t seem to grasp how overwhelming caring for a child can be.”

October 14, 2025

Subscribe by Email

Follow Updates Articles from This Blog via Email