Melissa's all at sea in psychological thriller Triangle

She also featured in the horror-thriller Turistas, had a brief story arc in Grey's Anatomy and was last week seen professing love for her therapist (Gabriel Byrne) in the UK debut of the acclaimed In Treatment.
From next Friday Melissa will be in cinemas playing the fractured character of Jess in the psychological thriller Triangle (not to be confused the BBC's lamented and lamentable soap-on-a-North-Sea-ferry).
Jess is with a group of friends on a yacht when they board an apparently deserted ocean liner to escape a storm. However, she is stricken with a feeling of deja vu and someone or something is hunting them down.

What did you like about Triangle?

What drew me to it was the fact that there's no female character I have seen in the last, ooh I don't know how long, who had so much screen time, and so many different facets to the one person. Gabriel Byrne taught me to always ask why. If you constantly ask why you always get the answers you want for the character and for the film.
There was a little concern of how we were going to tie it all in, the continuity of each Jess, with their different levels of her sanity. And we did wonder how that was going to work. I don't see my films usually but I went to see Triangle and I was so impressed. I couldn't believe it.

Do you feel underrated as an actress?

I think I am being appreciated but it is always going to take a long time. You look at any actress, say Naomi Watts, she was in LA for 14 years before she got a break. Mine was much faster. Mine was within six months, but every career is different.
I am good at being upset. Some actresses won't do that. My agent was saying to people, 'But she is really funny.' And people were like, 'She's not funny. She's taut.' That is fantastic because that emotion is very difficult to do. The hardest. If I can do that and then do some comedy, like I am shooting Swinging with The Finkels right now, that's perfect.

Apparently, as a kid you were more into dance than acting...

Oh, yeah, I'd do shows and I'd get money. I'd do crazy things like pogo-stick shows and fashion shows with my Bali sarongs! I tap danced as a kid, and I was there in my underclothes just five years old with my tap shoes on, tapping away. I'd be doing handstands on the wall. I was happy in Perth. I'd still be there today if my career hadn't demanded a change.

You moved to Sydney when you were a teenager to pursue acting, right?

I auditioned in Perth, and got the job playing a street kid on Home and Away. I remember the first audition for that, I was crying real tears.
Everyone was way more beautiful than me; I came in and I hadn't washed my hair in a week and I had put black under my eyes and dirty clothes. I was only a model and a roller-skater and I didn't know anything about acting, but I knew I was playing a real person.

Were you fiercely ambitious from the moment you got Home and Away?

I am fiercely ambitious but I never show it. I have these lists that I write at night: what to achieve the next day, and it has to be done. Has to be done. And at Christmas, before New Year's Eve, I write what I want to achieve the next year and then I put it in an envelope and don't open it until the following year. Then I look at what I have done. Have I done what I said? I first did that two years ago and now it's my ritual.

How did you meet your husband (Chilean film director Claudio Dabed)?

He was living in Bali and we got married there nine years ago. He had a business there so we had to live there. I would make movies and then go back to Bali. We met when he was in the corner of this restaurant with his Brazilian friend. I was with my girlfriend and I saw him. He was fabulous. I went to the ladies' room and he pulled my dress as I went by, and he just said to me, 'I think so'. I said 'I think so too' and that was it.

I hear you're designing your own fashion product...

I am designing a snap-hem that goes inside your jeans, so a woman can wear her high heels with a long hem but when she takes off her heels she can snap up the hem and wear her flats, so it's an ultimate hem for the same pair of jeans. It's pretty exciting; it could be like inventing Velcro!

You are a stepmum, but do you plan on having your own baby soon?

I love my step daughter. She's 15 now. I am still young but I have got to have kids soon, big time. I am renovating my apartment in New York right now and I really want to raise my children in Manhattan and Buenos Aires so I am thinking that I am going to get pregnant next year.
My parents are always going on about it. When I called my parents to tell them that I'd been nominated for a Golden Globe (for In Treatment) they thought I'd called to say that I was pregnant, and they were really disappointed!

TRIANGLE is released in cinemas on October 16.