She appears in virtually every scene, except for those depicting her childhood - and even then she's unusually attracted to dead animals.
    Grown up, her character becomes an embalmer sexually excited by the sight of dead white males roughly her own age.
    Molly Parker, a 24-year old Vancouver actor - already the veteran of TV movies and series - makes her big screen debut in director Lynne Stopkewich's risk-taking Kissed, based on a short story by Toronto's Barbara Gowdy.
    Kissed opens next Friday in Toronto and several Canadian and U.S. cities after its rapturous reception at last year's Toronto and Vancouver film festival and this year's Sundance (Utah) Festival.
    "I've never seen a dead body," confesses rake-thin, doe-eyed Parker.
    The "dead" males in the movie were alive, but just pretending not to be.
    Kissed is not a horror flick, but a serious feature that takes Canadian movies to a new boundary - like David Cronenberg's Crash did in another way.
   "One of the most important things for me, and I'm not talking about this part, is not to judgements," Parker says.  "I didn't have to with this character, because she doesn't.  She just accepts what she is."
    Quebec director Yves Simoneau, now working in Los Angeles, was so impressed by her performance in Kissed that he fought to get Parker for the lead role in Intensity, a 20th Century Fox TV psychological thriller mini-series recently filmed in Vancouver.
    Her character in that one becomes entangled in a web of serial killers.  "The challenge was, how many ways could I play fear and still be interesting?"
    But Parker adds with a smile : "Fox people also must have seen Kissed, because I think this is the first time a (Hollywood) studio cast a Canadian living in Canada in a lead role in a U.S. mini-series."
    Kissed also brought her representation by the powerful William Morris agency.  In Los Angeles a few months ago to promote Kissed, she auditioned "for some great roles.  I'm waiting."
    After she filmed Kissed, Bruce McDonald, who directed Parker in an episode of TV's Lonesome Dove, in which she played a killer, nabbed her for a regular role in Twitch City, a six-part situation comedy series CBC will televise in the fall.
    But she was not terrified when Stopkewich detailed the plot of Kissed to her after its cinematographer, Gregory Middleton, urged her to audition for what he called "a weird" movie that he could not tell her anything about.
    Parker's parents "were a little bit shocked" when she told them about Kissed, "but they totally supported and trusted me.
    "I was intrigued by this character and the writing was so poetic.  I trusted Lynne and she was so open to my input.  I felt confident the story would be told in the most palatable manner possible."
    Despite her character's sexual attraction to dead men, she doesn't violate the bodies.
    She moves around them with escalating excitement.  That culminates when she sensually dances around the body of a man, who, when alive (and played by Peter Outerbridge), declared his love for ger.  Learning of her inability to love the living, he made the ultimate sacrifice.
    That scene, she recalls, "was very difficult to shoot.  It took 16 hours.  A closed set."
    Except for Toronto-filmed Twitch City and Alberta-filmed Lonesome Dove, Parker has acted only in Vancouver - "lots of work there."
    She began acting professionally at the age 16, studied from ages three to 17 (the last five of those years at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School) and took drama in high school.
    She won a 1996 Gemini Award nomination for her role as a character who jilts her lover in the TV movie Paris Or Somewhere; played Glenn Close's daughter in Emmy Award winner Serving in Silence; the granddaughter of Eva Marie Saint in the Titanic mini-series; had guest roles in Madison, Outer Limits, Highlander and Neon Rider.
    "I consciously planned not to do work in the U.S. until I had film behind me."
    Parker calls Kissed "a wonderful opportunity.
    "I'm proud of the work, proud of the film.  It's remarkably unusual."
    But she adds, "I've had three years to get used to it, and now I think playing a role like this in a film like this quite ordinary."