Once hailed as “Audrey Hepburn with a darker edge,” actress Rose Byrne launched a successful film career in the United States after auspicious showbiz beginnings in television in her native Australia. Her pivotal role as Trojan princess Briseis in the epic “Troy” (2004) marked her first major exposure to American audiences, after which she lent her effusive charm to mainstream successes like “28 Days Later” (2007) while representing a promising new breed of young actor in the youthful thriller “Wicker Park” (2004) and a contemporary take on the life of “Marie Antoinette” (2006). An acclaimed co-starring role in the biting legal series “Damages” (FX, 2007- ) firmly established Byrne’s strength for mild-mannered characters concealing an unexpected strength just below the surface.
Born on July 24, 1979 in Sydney, Australia, Byrne began acting at eight years old when she joined the Australian Theatre for Young People. At 13, she was cast in her first film, “Dallas Doll” (1994), a comedy starring Sandra Bernhard as an American golf pro who seduces an entire family. The following year, she landed a starring role in “Echo Point” (1995); however that nighttime soap only lasted six months on the airwaves. Out of work and back in ordinary high school life, Byrne quickly learned how fleeting fame can be. As a 20-year-old, Byrne returned to the screen with a leading role in the critically acclaimed indie “Two Hands” (1999), co-starring fellow Aussie Heath Ledger. The crime-comedy about a small-time gangster in big-time trouble was a surprise entry in the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and won a few Film Critics of Australia awards. Her resume grew with significant appearances in “My Mother Frank” (1999) and “The Goddess of 1967” (2000), where Byrne played a blind and emotionally unstable girl left behind to fend for herself after a family murder/suicide. Byrne was awarded the Copa Volpi for Best Actress at the 1999 Venice International Film Festival for her performance; an honor that boosted her reputation as a solid actress.
Byrne made her first big Hollywood splash playing Dorme, Queen Padme’s handmaiden, in “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones” (2002). Despite the small, wordless nature of the role, her character Dorme achieved cult status, with a web forum devoted to her and an online petition to toy makers Hasbro for a Dormé action figure to be released. From that high-profile film Byrne co-starred in the sweetly comic 1930s-set British film “I Capture The Castle” (2002), for which she received solid notices for her performance as one of a pair of sisters in an eccentric rural family. Byrne worked steadily with supporting roles in the Australian comedies "The Night We Called it a Day” (2003) and “Take Away” (2003), as well as the coming-of-age drama “The Rage in Placid Lake” (2003) before her international break-out in “Troy” in 2004. The historical epic found Byrne playing a captured member of the Trojan royal family and enjoying the honor of an on-screen romance with star Brad Pitt. Byrne next appeared alongside Josh Hartnett, Matthew Lillard, and Diane Kruger in “Wicker Park” (2004), a Hitchcockian thriller about a man (Hartnett) caught in an obsessive search for a women he fell in love with (Kruger) while being manipulated by a woman (Byrne) who tries to keep them apart.
Balancing her multiplex offerings with more artful fare, Byrne gave an excellent performance in the BBC-produced “Casanova” (2005), playing a young kitchen maid who is shocked to learn that the elderly librarian (Peter O’Toole) in the castle is the legendary lover, Casanova. In a very different take on 18th century life, Byrne portrayed La Duchesse de Polignac, friend and confidant to “Marie Antoinette” (2006) in filmmaker Sofia Coppola’s hip interpretation of the doomed French queen. She next co-starred in “28 Weeks Later” (2007), the surprisingly good sequel to Danny Boyle’s excellent sci-fi horror film “28 Days Later” (2002) that saw the British Isles devastated by the so-called rage virus, which turns humans into unstoppable, blood-thirsty zombies. The same year, Byrne landed her first American primetime television role playing a young attorney and associate of a ruthless law veteran (Glenn Close) in the legal drama "Damages." In her first season, she made such a strong impression that she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Series.
Between her television shooting schedule Byrne continued to further her film career, starring in “The Dead Girl” (2007), five individual stories revolving around the discovery of a young woman's corpse, as well as the Australian drama “The Tender Hook” (2008) where she played a woman involved in a lover’s triangle with a con man and a boxer in 1920s Sydney. The following year she played a supporting role in the Nicholas Cage sci-fi thriller “Knowing” (2009), about a professor who races to prevent the apocalypse after discovering terrifying and true predictions of the future that were written by a grade school student 50 years ago.