In her latest movie, she plays a woman almost surgically attached to her Crackberry, so it’s a bit of a surprise when the Georgia Straight calls and Carly Pope doesn’t pick up. But five minutes later, when we try again, she explains she has taken a hard stand on technology.

“I keep my phone on silent, which is why I missed your call!” the upbeat Vancouverite says with a laugh, speaking over the phone from her apartment in L.A. In a world where actors are increasingly under pressure to bare their souls every five minutes via Twitter and personal blogs, the woman who’s starred in everything from TV’s Popular to the movie Young People Fucking has decided to unplug a little. “It’s something I started doing last year. It’s far too easy to get addicted to it and far too stressful to be on guard all the time”¦.I’ll look at my phone every so often, but I’ve chosen to bow out from the necessity of having it attached to my hand.”

In Textuality, her new Canadian romcom (which opens in Vancouver on Friday [April 22] ), her character, Simone, is wired in almost every way. The feisty visual artist is constantly hammering away at her blog and is openly juggling three boyfriends and a married man (Eric McCormack), firing text messages back and forth with them and filling up her calendar app. Simone thinks she’s found an easy, noncommittal rhythm to her love life when she suddenly starts to feel something different for Breslin (Jason Lewis), a corporate guy who’s just as casual with his hookups.

Pope was intrigued by the story that highlights the way texting almost makes it easy to take relationships lightly. Without giving away too much about her personal life, she admits that Simone’s character was one to which she could relate.

“There have been situations I found myself in where I was very honest about where I was at and what I was able to give and not give,” she says candidly. “I appreciated Simone’s honesty about what she was doing, but telling everybody doesn’t mean that she’s any more willing to take a leap of faith to try something that would be real. It allowed me to take a glance in the mirror. Simone, as much as she’s talking a big game, she’s really just looking for love.”

Pope felt even more affinity for Simone because, like her character, she dabbles in painting and has an easel set up in her apartment. (The moody canvases in the movie are by Toronto painter Elizabeth Dyer, though.) She was also drawn to shooting a film at home in Canada—and to the adrenaline rush of a 15-day shoot.

“When you’re working on a film, shooting it in 15 days, it has a different charge, a different energy to it, because you don’t have the time to get complacent,” Pope says, adding that energy was multiplied by the fact that many of the people involved in Textuality—from producer Marc Rigaux to its writer, Liam Card—had never made a film before. “I like that feeling of having to work hard.” Just don’t ask her to Tweet between takes.