Molly Parker, a prolific and talented actress, may have the proper Canadian humility about things, but she also understands that it's hard to become a great actress living in Toronto.  Right now, the intense, pale-skinned brunette is living in Los Angeles, where she's filming Wayne Wang's The Center of the World, a character piece based on a novel by Paul Auster.  The film will most likely be another impressive example of the kind of edgy independent features Parker's been starring in since she was a teenager in Vancouver (including Kissed (1996); The Five Senses ('99) and Sunshine ('00)).  Currently, she can be seen playing Billy Crudup's socialite girlfriend in Keith Gordon's Waking the Dead and opposite Don McKellar on the CBC TV series Twitch City.

Do you remember deciding you had to be an actress?

    I remember having a very sort of Pollyannaish moment.  I was studying and taking acting classes in Vancouver, and it was just so fun.  I remember thinking, 'This is so cool because you can do this forever and never get good at it.'  You can keep challenging yourself and learning to do it until you die, and the work would still be interesting.  And it still is.  Ten years later I'm much more cynical, but the work still excites me.  I'm doing a project now and I can't believe my life is this good.

Do you like L.A.?

    I've been coming down here for the last three years, on and off, and basically hating it.  But I've changed my head space about it, and now it's all right.  It's a complicated place.  It's funny and weird and strange.  The weird thing about being in L.A. is that for myself and all my friends, you're only here to work.  Your focus becomes about that, and it's hard to do anything else social.  Living anywhere else you have an ability to step away from it, which is really important.
    It's easy from outside to go, 'Oh it's the centre of evil.'  It's the epicentre of consumerism.  You can't just walk around and meet people.  But I have a community of friends now, basically all Canadian actors, all from home - Callum Keith Rennie, Sandra Oh, Eric McCormack.  We're all down here and we all want the same thing.  So you can stop being sort of shameful about wanting it.  I think in Canada you're sort of forced into feeling shameful about wanting to be successful.  And here it's like, 'What's the big deal?'  Just by coming here you make that admission, and then you can move on.

Will you be able to resist moving down there for good?

    I'm trying.  It's not easy.  It's very expensive to live away from here and try to participate in doing movies.  It means that I fly back and fourth to Toronto.  But it's not that I could just sit in Canada and have a fabulous film career.  Even if one is working more than anyone else in Canada, it still wouldn't be enough work.  There's just not enough work.  And I want to go anywhere that I have the opportunity to work with great people on great material.  That's way more important to me than having some kind of idea about Canada.  At the end of the day I want it to be my home.  I'm trying to have it all.

What was Michael Winterbottom [whose upcoming Wonderland was nominated for best picture in England] like to work with?

    He's really nice, but I only talked to him around twice before we started shooting.  I call it method directing.  I see it more and more.  Like Mike Leigh.  When I got to London he had lists of things he wanted me to do.  So I would trip around the tube and buy groceries for an entire week and go to birth classes.  Every actor has a different way of working, but for me I think it was actually crucial.

Do you enjoy the travelling?

    I've gotten to go to all kind of places I wouldn't have gotten to go to.  That's fun.  But it's always work and it gets lonely.  I remember being very lonely in London.

Do you read your press?

    I don't read stuff that's written about me anymore.  I just get really tired of hearing my own voice.  It's really boring, and it doesn't matter how much they like you, and it doesn't matter how good the writer is or how much they like you, I am never going to read something and go, 'gee I really think they captured me.' It's not what I'm going to show, and it's not what they're going to get.

Who have you most enjoyed working with?

    I just made another movie with Lynn Stopkewich, who directed Kissed.  It was so exciting to be able to work with he again.  It's wonderful to be able to find someone who wants to work with you more than once, because then you have a creative relationship based on a knowledge of each other.  You don't have to be polite.  I would do a scene and look at her and look at her and she'd go, 'Eh, I guess it was OK.'  But you know there's intense respect and love for each other.  If you know that, you can go as far as you need to.
    And I would work with [Sunshine director] István Szabó again.  He was just beautiful.  He loves actor s more than anyone I've ever met.  He's been making movies for 25 years and he has important stories that he wants to tell and that have value and that's what he cares about deeply.  He inspires confidence and has an understanding.  I think lots of directors are afraid of actors because they don't understand how we do what we do.  They don't know how to get what they want, and so actors become enshrined in this weird way.  Like how can you make yourself cry?  Acting can be incredibly confusing and incredibly enlightening, which is why actors tend to be more self-aware.  And which unfortunately leads so often to self-obsession.  But on the days that go by that I don't like actors and I don't like myself, I remind myself that it's incredibly courageous thing to do.  Even if you're playing someone else, it's still your soul.  And it's about tapping into different parts of yourself that most people don't go near.