Actress Jennifer Tilly Is in on the joke

The American-Canadian has a knack for embodying characters who somehow stand above or outside themselves

- Guy Trebay

NEW YORK - She has been electrocuted, hatcheted, murdered by a doll with her soul trapped inside it. She has also notched up an epic kill count of her own, decapitating one victim with a nail file, eviscerating another and melting off one unfortunate's face with boiling water. And that was before she joined The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills (2010 to present).

"At least in the Chucky movies, you get stabbed in the front," American-Canadian actress Jennifer Tilly said coolly, shooting a knowing look at this reporter.

We are in a booth of Margaux restaurant at Marlton Hotel in Greenwich Village. It is midafternoon and we are the only customers in the place. Tilly is wearing a simple black minidress with a flounced neckline cut low. Decolletage is her wardrobe default.

Picking at a mesclun salad, Tilly appears young enough to force a double-take. At 66, she has spent four decades in the public eye. The Academy Award nomination she sometimes fudges in conversation to make it seem like a win came so long ago that Mr Bill Clinton was president.

That was for her inspired portrayal of a mobster's floozy hell-bent on a theatrical career in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (1994). The role, as written, was a camp inside a parody inside a million show-business cliches.

IMPRESSIVE RESUME Tilly has a knack for embodying characters who somehow stand above or outside themselves. Think the scream queen Tiffany Valentine in the endlessly recurring Chucky horror series (1988 to present). Think of her stylised lesbian femme fatale, Violet, in the thriller Bound (1996), the directorial debut of Lana and Lilly Wachowski.

Tilly has also been cast in her share of cartoons, including for the