Frightfully funny

Actress Anna Faris has had quite a year, not that many people have noticed. “Scary Movie 3,” which reprises her role from the first two installments of the massively successful series, is her fourth film to be released this year.

She slyly stole “The Hot Chick” from star Rob Schneider with a performance more layered and nuanced than the movie deserved. She also did a spirited turn as a bawdy veterinarian’s receptionist in the underseen jewel “May.” Her small part in Sophia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” garnered her perhaps the most attention.

Raised in Seattle, the 26-year-old has been acting since she was 9, appearing in local theater, commercials and industrial videos. While attending the University of Washington she got a small part in a low-budget horror film, “Lover’s Lane,” which she describes as “one of the worst movies you’ve ever seen.” Nevertheless, she found the film’s cast and crew inspiring, and moved to Los Angeles.

“ ‘Scary Movie’ was my first audition,” she says. “And I know that’s why I got it. I was so unbelievably naive -- ‘I’m gonna get this role!’ -- I’ll never feel that way again.”

Diving into the world of Hollywood, she had a steep learning curve. “When I got cast it was my first big movie, and in walks Shannon Elizabeth, and she’s beautiful and has an unbelievable body. I was just out of college, eating cheeseburgers everyday, drinking beer, and what -- working out? People do that? It was really hard.” Looking down at her bowl of yogurt and granola, she adds, “Since then I’ve totally given in to L.A.”

Likewise, Faris had no idea what to expect once the movie actually came out. “From things people said to me, I was expecting something monumental, and those things didn’t happen, at least they didn’t happen to me. And you get the mentality of, it’s all downhill from here, people will just give me parts. And it doesn’t work that way.”

In “Lost in Translation,” as a dimwitted movie star in Tokyo to promote her latest film, Faris mouths an endless string of platitudes about the latest cleanse or her dogs or working with Keanu, assaying a cliched vision of young Hollywood. Some observers have speculated that her role was meant as a send-up of Cameron Diaz, but Coppola never specified the character’s origin. Faris was aware the part had been offered first to a “big celebrity,” but never found out who, although “I have my suspicions.” Describing her character, Faris says, “She’s not a mean person, just unbelievably self-absorbed. She can’t not be, in that she’s young, she’s a huge star and people cater to her left and right. She’s not really educated and she’s had limited exposure to the world. At the same time, I couldn’t totally mock this person, because there’s more than a little of her in me.”

Then there is her outrageous rendition of the soft sounds classic “Nobody Does It Better,” belted out to a hotel lounge full of startled patrons. “My character’s supposed to be really drunk and wants to give these people a treat. They’re going to talk about it for years. I only got to sing it once.

“The sun was rising and we had to get the shot because we couldn’t shoot in the hotel during the day. I had an earpiece, but other than that we couldn’t play any music. So I’m the only one who could hear the music, and the rest of the crew just heard my awful singing.”

“She cracked me up,” says the notoriously deadpan Coppola. “She could improvise so easily. ... She could just go on and on with making it up and always saying it with a straight face.”

“She is amazing,” says ‘Scary Movie 3’ director David Zucker, “Like driving a Ferrari, I guess. She knows exactly where the joke is and is just a natural comedienne .... I don’t know anybody else her age who can do what she does. It opened up so many fresh avenues for me to do jokes from Anna’s perspective. And I had never done that before, I’m total boy humor.”

“People always say I have good timing, but I don’t think that’s it. Marlon Wayans told me timing is everything, timing is comedy, and I never really understood that.... I think it’s just appropriate reactions for the character and the situation more than timing. At least for me it’s the innocence and the cluelessness of the characters where the comedy comes from.”

The most apparent difference between the first two “Scary Movie” films and the latest is the shift from an R rating to a PG-13. Where the Wayans brothers, the series’ creators, pushed the boundaries of taste, Zucker, behind such pictures as “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun,” works in a tone of genial roughhousing.

“I loved working with the Wayanses,” say Faris, “but working with David Zucker it felt like I had a sense of ownership. Playing Cindy for a third time, I know this character and David really allowed me to make it my own.

“The hardest part with David was the physicality of it, the exactness of how jokes are revealed. You have to move a certain way, hit your mark just so. The scene in the trailer where I hit my head on a microphone was unbelievably difficult to shoot.... David couldn’t have cared less how I said the line, he just wanted to be sure I hit the mike head-on. I had to do it at least 10 times.”

Hoping for a “slow and steady” career path, for now Faris is focusing on her upcoming wedding to Ben Indra, who she met on that horror movie which inspired her move to L.A., and overseeing the remodeling of a house the couple purchased this year. Asked about the impetus for their foray into home ownership, with a shrug and a big grin, Faris says, “Scary Movie 3.”