Glamour, grit and awards season gold: inside Rose Byrne's leading lady moment
On a sultry evening in Beverly Hills this January, Rose Byrne looked astonished as she picked up a Golden Globe for her new, small-budget movie, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Her first major award. A vision of Hollywood glamour, she stepped into the spotlight in a custom Chanel emerald-green draped silk gown, embroidered with glass pearls and crystals, her lustrous chestnut hair falling softly to her shoulders. She was placed at the It table, alongside Kylie Jenner and The Rock. All that to say, one thing was clear as the plot of 2026 began to unfold: Rose Byrne had arrived.
Move over, Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman – those other uber-talented Australian beauties who’ve made it in the States (and covered this magazine). It’s Rose’s era now. A week or so after the Globes, as an Arctic-level deep freeze blasts the northeastern coast, I’m searching for the woman of the moment in a Brooklyn café, where she has agreed to meet for an interview. I walk right past her, then backtrack. With a beige knit cap pulled down to her ears, Byrne is swathed under several layers of wool, a look hardly presenting as movie star. ‘I’m just another Brooklyn mom,’ the New South Wales-born star says with a laugh as we sit. Feel free to raise an eyebrow.
While she is indeed a mother in the borough – she shares sons Rocco, 10, and Rafael, eight, with her longtime partner and fellow actor, Bobby Cannavale – she has become, over decades of hard work, a cultural icon. Few other actresses have worked as steadily and successfully across so many genres. Zigzagging between screens big and small, she’s done comedy (Get Him to the Greek; Bridesmaids), historical epics (Troy), horror (Insidious), sci-fi (I Am Mother), Marvel (X-Men) and legal drama (Damages). Two Emmy and two previous Golden Globe nominations honoured that work, but she left the ceremonies empty-handed.
Now, there has been a shift. A step change for the 46-year-old since the recent release of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a nerve-shredding dark comedy in which Byrne stars as a woman unravelling while she cares for a child with an unspecified illness. It is a career-defining performance, evidenced by the raft of nominations. In addition to earning a Globe, she’s been up for an Independent Spirit Award (which she won), a Critics’ Choice Award, an Actor Award, a Gotham Award, a Bafta and the holy grail – an Academy Award.
Trembling, she gave a charmingly self-effacing speech. ‘I can’t believe you wanted me to do this,’ she said, addressing her writer-director Mary Bronstein. ‘We shot this movie in 25 days for like $8.50. This is a tiny movie, so it is a huge thing to be up here,’ she went on. So tiny that her parents ‘bought Paramount+ so they could watch from Sydney’. And her date? Her brother George. Poor Cannavale missed out. ‘He couldn’t be here… We’re getting a bearded dragon [lizard], and he went to a reptile expo in New Jersey. So, thank you, baby.’
All this is a far cry from her roots. Byrne grew up in Balmain, an affluent, creative Sydney suburb. That Aussie edge is still perceptible, filtered through her style. Beneath a minimalist navy coat by The Row, layered with a Chanel scarf and a Lauren Manoogian sweater, she’s wearing a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. ‘I love fashion,’ she says. ‘I think it should be fun, it shouldn’t be taken too seriously.’