Olivia Thirlby first got our attention in JUNO when she attempted to explain away Ellen Page's pregnant predicament by suggesting she was merely carrying a "food baby". A year later, she was breaking hearts as the alluring, oh-so-fleetingly attainable Stephanie in THE WACKNESS. This year, she's turning up on magazine covers, appearing in three indie flicks (ARLEN FABER, BREAKING UPWARDS and the recently released WHAT GOES UP), and, because she's cool, doing a play in Los Angeles. Though one of these magazine covers has gone so far as to declare Thirlby a "next generation star", this twenty-two-year-old "It Girl" (she gets that a lot as well) is far too talented and way too young for this to be her make-or-break moment. So long as she's in this for more than the selling of an image (and the fact that she's making time for theater proves to me that she's not in a rush to go Hollywood), Thirlby's got nothing but time. Let the wannabe starlets chase down the part of the girlfriend in some special effects-laden summer movie; Thirlby's just going to chill and takes whatever comes her way. She can currently be seen in Jonathan Glatzer's WHAT GOES UP (formerly SAFETY GLASS), an incredibly ambitious, set-in-1986 dark comedy about a burned-out New York City journalist, Campbell Babbitt (Steve Coogan), who gets sent to "Siberia" (i.e. New Hampshire) to cover the impending launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger - which counts among its crew a local hero by the name of Christa McAuliffe. Almost immediately upon arriving, Babbitt finds himself caught up in the lives of a group of high school-aged outcasts who've built up a cult around their favorite high school teacher - who's just committed suicide. Being that the teacher was an old college buddy of Babbitt's, the kids latch onto the reporter as a replacement guru of sorts. This threatens to go disastrously wrong when the very cute and deeply confused Lucy (Hilary Duff) falls for Babbitt. It's a movie crammed with incident, but Thirlby manages to set herself apart as the skeptical Tess, who finds plenty of reasons to doubt Babbitt's motives as he steps in for his deceased friend. Tess is trying hard to be the disaffected, above-it-all type, but, unsurprisingly, it turns out that she's repressing as much pain as anyone else. It's a dark role for Thirlby, and it goes against her natural, laid-back appeal, but she gets the anguish across effortlessly in a way that's, if anything, a little too soulful for a depressed teen. Tess feels like she's been out in the world a bit. It's a lovely little performance. I got on the phone with Thirlby last week for a brief interview as she knocked about New York City in the late afternoon doing whatever. In the below back-and-forth, we discuss her non-method method process in preparing for Tess, the state of independent film, and whether or not Kenneth Lonergan's MARGARET (on which she worked four years ago) will ever get released. There's also a surprise cameo appearance by a 30 ROCK star. Please enjoy.

Mr. Beaks: Your character, Tess, is an outsider within a group of outcasts.

Olivia Thirlby: She is. She definitely is the least liked, I think. I don't think she has any real bond with any of her classmates. She probably manifests that in herself; I think she's a bit surly and unpleasant to be around, sort of a buzzkill. I think also she's keeping such dark secrets inside her, and that probably forms a sort of schism between her and other people. People can't even ask where she is or where she's coming from, so to save herself the pain, she probably just puts a divide between herself and everyone around her. She's an incredibly upset person. (Laughs)

Beaks: Probably the least happiest person you've ever played.

Thirlby: She is definitely the singularly most unhappy, miserable, depressed and dark character that I've ever played.

Beaks: Those are fun to play once in a while.

Thirlby: Yeah, I wouldn't say "fun". Maybe "necessary". You learn something, I think. I learned plenty about my own recovery process because Tess weighed me down a little bit; it actually took me a few months before I felt normal again. That was my first experience with anything like that.

Beaks: When it came to relating to your fellow cast members, did you get kind of method with it and try to keep your distance from them on set? How into it did you get?

Thirlby: (Laughs) I wish I could say I was that method, but I was working with a group of people who were too wonderful to ignore. I can't say that when I was on location I ignored the people I was working with. As far as for when I was on set, I didn't do much socializing. I would usually hole up in my trailer and draw these really awful, dark sketches about abortions and dead teachers and stuff like that. Because Tess is an artist, I had a sketchpad and I tried to draw stuff a lot. So I would spend hours in my trailer making these really dark, horrific drawings and writing poetry that was really bleak. (Laughs)

Beaks: (Laughing) That sounds pretty method to me!

Thirlby: Yeah, but at the end of the day when I took off eyeliner... I mean, it's really fun to be working in a really large crew of young people who are all so wonderful. Josh Peck, of course, is my old buddy. We actually found out that THE WACKNESS got into Sundance while we were working on [WHAT GOES UP]. And Max Hoffman... there are a whole slew of amazing Canadian actors, and we all spent quite a lot of time together.

Beaks: So when you were shooting THE WACKNESS, you knew you were going to go right from that into another movie with Josh?

Thirlby: We didn't actually put two and two together until one of the very last days of THE WACKNESS. He said he had just gotten a job, and I congratulated him. He was excited about it, so I asked him what it was. He told me, and I said, "Well, I'm attached to that movie!" (Laughs) But while we were filming [THE WACKNESS], we had no idea we would be working together again.

Beaks: I'm really impressed by your choices so far in roles. But they've sort of bestowed that "indie actor" title on you. How are you looking at roles right now? Is it a script-by-script thing, or are you making a concerted effort to stick to smaller, more intimate films?

Thirlby: It's really not about the size of the movie or whether it's independently financed. It's really just about the role. I see a lot of roles that are similar to the character I played in THE WACKNESS, and even though they can be really great roles and really great scripts, I've turned down several things because I didn't want to get repetitive. So it is a script-by-script basis. I don't choose to make only indie movies; it just seems to work out that way. Whenever I'm up for a big movie, I never end up getting the part, so who knows! It's just the luck of the draw.

Beaks: That just means they have bad taste.

Thirlby: Oh, that's very kind. (Laughs

Beaks: When I was living in New York during the late '90s, there was a very real independent film community. Every week, you could go to the Angelika and see a new movie that was shot somewhere in the city. Does that community still exists?

Thirlby: I don't think so. Indie film is sort of dead. (Laughs) I mean, it's not, but I think that the nature of what "indie film" is has changed so extraordinarily that any film that isn't produced by a huge studio can be called a "studio film"; even if the entire cast is made up of incredibly famous actors and the budget is a few million dollars, it still can be called an "indie". That's why at Sundance you can have a movie that has three incredibly famous actors headlining it, was made for a budget of $15 million, and it's in the lineup next to something that was shot for a few hundred thousand in the deep south with non-actors. The line is really blurry. Independent film is kind of a fad. And I actually think that a lot of actors and the community itself is suffering. A lot of really remarkable up-and-coming actors can't get parts in indie films because indie films need names to get financed. So what once was the New York indie community, those actors in the present wouldn't be getting cast. It's sort of sad. But I think maybe the pendulum is going to swing back in the other direction. I was just reading the mission statement of the guys that are now going to start running Sundance, and I thought they had some pretty cool and interesting ideas. We'll see how that turns out. Can you hold on one second?

Beaks: Sure.

(Thirlby pauses to chat with someone she's encountered on the street. I'm not eavesdropping, but this chunk comes through clear as day.) Guy: Tell me your name again. Thirlby: Olivia. Guy: You're an actor. Thirlby: Yeah. Guy: You're good. Thirlby: Yeah, thanks. I like you, too, buddy. (He then repeats his name, at which point I realize she's talking to the great and powerful Judah Friedlander.) Thirlby: Okay. Nice to see you. (Back on the phone) I'm really sorry. I just ran into a friend on the street.

Beaks: Was that Judah Friedlander?

Thirlby: Yeah. (Laughs)

Beaks: That's awesome. I love him.

Thirlby: (Laughing) I keep running into him at various things. And then we run into each other again. He's kind of hard to miss, you know.

Beaks: Yes. Extraordinarily hard to miss. Actually, one thing I want to touch on with WHAT GOES UP is the way the film is built around the Challenger Shuttle Disaster. That happened when I was in sixth grade, but I don't think you were even born yet. So I'm curious if there's any resonance or significance in that event for you.

Thirlby: I can't say that there is any direct resonance. It happened in '86, and I wasn't born until October of '86. As something that didn't occur during my lifetime, I can't say that it had an impact on me. But I can point to other really significant things that happened when I was in grade school, such as 9/11. In that sense I can sort of identify with that sort of tragic and painful and life-changing event when you're that age. But another thing I liked about the film was the fact that the crash doesn't actually happen during the film. So while we were making the movie, it wasn't something that we had to think about whatsoever because our characters were not armed with the information. It's almost irrelevant to our characters.

Beaks: Although the crash does happen symbolically with the paper-mache shuttle slamming to the ground.

Thirlby: Exactly. The paper-mache shuttle breaks, so for us educated audiences in 2009, we can draw the parallel. But as far as the characters are concerned, it doesn't mean anything - except for Lute. She was pretty devastated about the paper-mache shuttle.

Beaks: There's one movie you acted in that's been something of an obsession for me. I read the script years ago, and wrote about it for the site. It's MARGARET. It's honestly one of the best original screenplays I've ever read. But it's had a very rocky post-production. There was a story recently that said Kenneth Lonergan is still working on it and trying to find a cut of the film he likes. Have you heard anything about the film? Have you come back to do any ADR work or anything like that?

Thirlby: I haven't. I wish I could say that I have or that I know what's going on, but I actually haven't heard anything. Every now and again I'll run into an actor who was in the film with me, and we'll sort of just shrug our shoulders and say, "I guess it'll come out one day." (Laughs)

Beaks: When you were making the film, did it feel like different, or was it like any other set?

Thirlby: It was technically the second job I'd ever had as an actress in film, and... yeah, it was an awesome experience. I think I was, like, nineteen. It was about three days worth of work, and I got to meet one of my all-time heroes in Matthew Broderick. It was a wonderful experience, but it felt just like any other film set.

Beaks: Well, hopefully we'll be seeing it one of these days.

Thirlby: I hope so, too, man! I have run into people who've seen it, and everybody says it's fantastic.

Beaks: I guess Martin Scorsese called it a "masterpiece", so that's not bad.

Thirlby: I hadn't heard that. That can't be bad.

Beaks: So do you have anything else coming up?

Thirlby: I actually have a film coming up called THE ANSWER MAN. It was also called ARLEN FABER. It has two names. I don't know which one they're going to use. But it's a movie with Jeff Daniels and Lauren Graham, and I have a small supporting role. I saw the movie at Sundance. It was in competition, and it was absolutely fantastic. I loved it, and I'm very proud to be in it. I recommend it for pretty much anyone to see. It's a great little movie about, you know, love and kind of figuring out what in the world we're doing here. (Laughs) And I'm about to actually come out to L.A. for a couple of months to be in the second run of a play called FARRAGUT NORTH, which I was in the first run, its maiden voyage here in New York last year. We're doing it at the Geffen Playhouse. So that's what I'm going to be doing with my summer.

Beaks: I'm looking forward to seeing that. I read the reviews during its New York run, and it sounded great. They were talking about making a film of it, weren't they?

Thirlby: Actually, I technically read the screenplay before I even read the play. I read the screenplay years ago, and then it came back around as a stage play, and we know how that turned out. It will hopefully be made into a movie one day - hopefully with me in it. (Laughs) Fingers crossed!

Like she needs luck. WHAT GOES UP is currently in limited release. THE ANSWER MAN aka ARLEN FABER is due out on June 24th, 2009. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks