A chat w/Jennifer Tilly...

Interviewing Jennifer Tilly is a lot like being at a really good party: You hear lots of great stories, you laugh a lot, and it all ends far too soon.
All I needed was a drink!
Jennifer was calling from Puerta Vallarta to talk up her movie “Intervention” which won best feature honors at the San Diego Film Festival last month and earned Jennifer the best actress prize.
“Actors, we always love to get awards,” admits Jennifer, nominated for an Oscar for Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” in 1995. “It’s really nice to get validation and we worked really hard on that film. The entire movie was improvised and everyone came up with their own characters.”
With the strong reviews for “Intervention,” might there be another chance at Oscar?
“I never thought I was going to become major, major,” she said. “The Oscar nomination came out of nowhere. I did my own little campaign, I did my own ads. Overnight, I had the paparazzi, who would take pictures of me if I hung around long enough looking hopeful. Once in awhile, ‘Entertainment Tonight’ would ask me something if no one was around. Then everyone wanted my opinion about eveything! It was hard to realize my social status had changed.”
While Jennifer is best known for her comic roles in such films as “Bullets,” and “Liar Lair” and as the voice of Bonnie Swanson on “Family Guy,” “Intervention” gives her a chance to show her dramatic chops. She plays a woman confronting the possible disintegration of her marriage as her husband goes through drug rehabilitation.
“I do a lot of comedy, comedy is fun and I like to make people laugh. This entire movie was improvised and everyone came up with their own characters. When I’m faced with that situation, I like to come up with the kind of character no one casts me as.”
“There’s a scene where Rupert [Graves] and I sit down at rehab and it disinegrates into a brawl and you just realize these people are hopeless. It’s the epitome of a destructive relationship where they really want to be together but are destroying each other. Everyone has been in that relationship.”
Once famously dubbed the hardest working actress in Hollywood, six films in the can waiting for release.
One of the movies on tap is “Silver Valley” which Jennifer describes as “the most expensive movie China ever made. The whole movie is in Chinese except my scenes. It’s a sweeping epic. The Chinese girls in scenes with me had to learn to speak English phonetically.”
Not only does she do a lot of work in independent films, but she attends professional poker tournaments throughout the world. She won the World Series of Poker bracelet in 2005 and regularly appears in televised poker events.
“My boyfriend \[Phil Laak\] is a professional poker player and I have an alternative career. I won the gold bracelet and it’s like winning an Olympic Gold Medal. Poker is one of those amazing games like chess where you never master it. It’s been hard having two careers...I have literally in my hallway eight suitcases that have not been unpacked. I’m always on the go. I’ve always been a workaholic.”
Always in demand for film roles, a few years back Jennifer made her first foray into series television as Henry Winkler's girlfriend in the CBS sitcom "Out of Practice." She is still smarting over the cancellation of the show which had solid ratings but was not renewed for a second season.
The show also starred Stockard Channing and Christopher Gorham, among others.
“They kept taking us off the air,” she said. “I honestly think the future in acting for actresses over 40 is in television. The roles are great and so is the writing.”
Whatever she does, Jennifer has long has a loyal audience of gay and lesbian fans which only intensified when she played a lesbian in the cult classic, "Bound."
"I get a lot of lesbian respect which is very, very gratifying. Lesbians are women, they don't care as much what other people think as regular girls do. They are going places and doing things."
"I think the gay audience is sophisticated with a highly developed sense of humor and before "Bound" I had a huge following, I think, because I'm, a little like a drag queen. "Bride of Chucky," oddly enough, was popular with gay audiences and in "Seed of Chucky," there was a transgender child and me in all my glory playing an over the top movie star. It's fun to make fun of myself.”