starred in the 2010 season finale of NCIS: Los Angeles alongside former Deep Blue Sea castmate LL Cool J. In 2011, Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, the co-artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, invited McKenzie to star in their production of Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) at the Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre. Co-starring Mandy McElhinney, this production went on tour to Melbourne Theatre Company, Wollongong, Canberra and Parramatta Riverside Theatre, earning McKenzie a Best Actress nomination at the Green Room Awards for her role as Mrs Givings. This was McKenzie's first play since her critically acclaimed turn as Catherine in David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize–winning play Proof, which sold out at the Sydney Opera House in 2003. In 2012, she accepted Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton's invitation to star in the Australian premiere of the two-hander Sex With Strangers by American playwright Laura Eason (House of Cards) for the Sydney Theatre Company. This critically acclaimed production co-starred Ryan Corr and was directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse. An award-winning director of many films including How to Make an American Quilt, this was Jocelyn's first play. In 2013, McKenzie starred in the seminal role of Margaret (a.k.a. Maggie) in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams for Belvoir St., directed by Simon Stone, co-starring Ewen Leslie (as Brick) and Marshall Napier (as Big Daddy). A sell-out production with an extension season at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, McKenzie's performance, in the role that made Elizabeth Taylor famous, was highly acclaimed: "Jacqueline McKenzie has far more scope in this play than she had in the recent Sex with Strangers to display her mesmerizing and neurasthenic talents that are so reminiscent of the early Judy Davis. She squirms, hops, skips and flops through the drama with a manic intensity that is breathtaking to watch from the first scene when she works her way through about a dozen changes of clothing and many pairs of 'hot' shoes during her long and intense opening monologue" and "McKenzie has been playing some major roles in Sydney recently but here is a great one, finally worthy of her ability, and she rises to it magnificently. Her Maggie is full of feverish energy, and hard-won, hard-edged glamour that a woman who has clawed herself up out of poverty to become the wife of the descendant of a crass but very rich family might