kicks & giggles

ROSE BYRNE'S OSCAR NOMINATION FOR 'IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU' IS THE CULMINATION OF NEARLY TWO DECADES OF REFUSING TO BE PIGEONHOLED.

- MARY MCNAMARA

WHEN ROSE BYRNE WON A GOLDEN GLOBE LAST month for her starring role as a mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd kick You," her acceptance speech briefly threatened to overshadow the actual honor. In it, she explained that her longtime partner, Bobby Cannavale, was absent from the ceremony because he was at a reptile convention in New Jersey, where he hoped to fulfill their children's dreams by purchasing a bearded dragon. It was a charming and funny aside that some users of social media naturally used to criticize Cannavale and try to gin up a controversy. (Insert eye-roll emoji here.) Byrne, now an Oscar nominee for the same role, found herself having to explain that parenthood almost always comes with scheduling conflicts and answer follow-up questions about the reptilian addition to her family. Including, I regret to report, from me. Since Conan O'Brien, who co-stars in "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You," will be hosting this year's Oscars, it seems natural that Byrne will get some sort of comedic shout-out during the telecast. Has he asked her to bring the bearded lizard with her to the ceremony? "I think he knows better than to ask that," she says, laughing. "I really regret that," she adds, referring to her acceptance speech revelation. "I'm an essentially pretty private person, and it's a tough line you have to straddle with the press. I definitely learned a lesson." Fortunately, Byrne's professional life is rich enough to require no offscreen embroidery. Nineteen years ago, she burst onto the cultural landscape in high drama-queen style: Wildeyed, half-naked and covered in blood. The 2007 opening of FX's groundbreaking legal drama "Damages," in which Byrne's young lawyer, Ellen Parsons, flees an uptown New York apartment building in which something terrible has clearly happened, sparked all manner of conversation. As the series unfurled, proving to a skeptical entertainment industry that women can be compelling antiher