Carrie-Anne Moss has been a model, a singer, and a cult-film hero—hell, she even has her own action figures. But the ex-Vancouverite has never had much to do with zombies. Until now.

In the satirical Fido, which opens on Friday (March 16), she plays Helen Robinson, stylish suburban mom, devoted housewife, and proud owner of a newly zombified servant because, well, all the neighbours have one. Directed by Vancouver's Andrew Currie and shot in the Kelowna area (from a script Currie wrote with Robert Chomiak and Dennis Heaton), the film is set in a fictional 1950s that finds the Cold War replaced by an ongoing struggle with the undead.

For Moss, the part was designed to bring out her inner Barbara Billingsley. And it was a nifty step in her plan to get off the juggernaut that was The Matrix, which found her playing cold-blooded Trinity in three mega-selling features and several animated and video-game spinoffs. (Few remember she also had a part in a little-seen TV series called Matrix that aired 14 years ago and preceded the blockbuster films.)

“To be honest, I didn't find it that difficult to get past The Matrix,” she says, talking to the Georgia Straight from her home in Los Angeles. “I never felt typecast at all.”

Last year, she was noted for her gritty supporting role in Snow Cake, a Canada–U.K. coproduction that cast her as the flighty romantic interest of an ex-con (Alan Rickman) who is visiting a small Ontario town on unfinished business. Snow Cake and Fido have found her working in Canada again after a long hiatus in L.A.

“It's been really refreshing for me. I put it out there that I wanted to do that. People kept saying, ”˜You must work in Canada all the time.' But I had to say, ”˜Well, I used to.' But I thought, ”˜They're making such great movies up there; I just have to do some.'

“When I work, obviously the material is the first and most important thing. Then the director and who I'll be working with. And then the location comes into it. Where is it shooting? Because I have a family that has to uproot to do that with me. There are places that are more appealing to do that than others, and Canada in general is one of the places where I feel comfortable.”

Indeed, since Moss and Canadian-born husband Steven Roy had two children in the past few years, she's been drawn to the green, green grass of home. When she mentions Canada, she's actually thinking of Vancouver and Toronto. “Well, I did work in Wawa,” she says with a laugh, referring to Snow Cake's Ontario location. The movie shares with Fido a sense of rural isolation.

The process of uncovering the inner workings of her character is equally mysterious, whether she's playing a “loose woman” or a repressed Stepford wife. (She also moved away from Matrix Land with notable parts in Memento and Chocolat.)

“Most of the scenes [in Snow Cake] were with Alan Rickman alone, so we got to explore it in an intimate way instead of the very technical ways that films can feel like. It's different for every role. But I find myself working on it when I go for a walk, or at the grocery store. I'll just suddenly have a moment about the character. Of course, I do the sitting down, the reading, the writing, the exploration of the character. I often work with a coach, just to talk it out with someone. And I just let myself explore it within my own life. Then, on the day of shooting, I throw it all away and try to stay as honest and in the moment as I possibly can, hoping that the homework will be there when I need it.”

In Snow Cake, we only have the word of Sigourney Weaver's character—a middle-aged autistic woman—to tell us who Moss is playing. Weaver calls her the “town slut”, but what we see is really quite different.

“I don't think there's ever one way to play anything. And I don't want to be stuck with one idea. For example, in Snow Cake, she [Moss's character, Maggie] was written as being very sexual. To read it, you'd think, ”˜She's sort of the town tramp.' But I never could get a picture of what that would look like; I knew I couldn't play that and make it be true for me. I'm not Kim Cattrall, you know? So I went softer than what was written, and that's just what happened in the moments between ”˜action' and ”˜cut'.”

In the casting process for each project, Moss sometimes suffers from an excess of objectivity. “I'm always saying to directors, ”˜Wouldn't Julianne Moore be perfect for this part?' And they're like, ”˜Uh, no. We were hoping you would do it.' But every once in a while I'll read something and really can't see anyone else playing it. With Trinity, once I got into it, I couldn't imagine anyone else in the part.”

In Fido, the strokes are much broader than those she usually employs, even for the stylized, leather-clad Trinity. But the characters still manage to go through some transformations. In a genre spoof, perhaps even more than in other movies, the actors must possess more self-knowledge than the people they play.

“I've had this discussion many times with my husband, who's an actor, and my best friend, Maria Bello, who's an actor. It's a discussion about how we explore these things in our everyday lives, and I find that actors are fairly aware people. And the more aware you become, as a human being, the more difficult it becomes to play someone who's not aware. Yet you have to remember that most people don't tell you how they feel. They are masking their feelings with other hands. That's when an actor's work sticks out for us, I think: when you can see that process in action.”

Moss started her show-business career as a musician. Named after a hit song by the Hollies that came out shortly before her 1967 Vancouver birth, she spent her early years in Burnaby and moved to Granville Island as a teenager, taking the arts program at a local high school and concentrating on singing and drama before graduating from Magee secondary and heading off to Europe to work as a fashion model. “The thing I love about music is that if a singer is good, let's say, you are instantly transported to that emotion. Acting is a more drawn-out process.”

And comedy is even more complicated. In Fido, Moss plays straight woman to Billy Connolly, the Scottish comic best known for his brogue and wild hair—neither of which he was allowed to bring to Fido. For director Andrew Currie, the movie was a chance to meld radically different acting styles for a blend of genre conventions.

“It sounds kind of dopey,” Currie says into a failing cellphone just before heading out the door of his Vancouver home, “but I've always been a huge fan of Carrie-Anne's. Then, when she read the part, it was clear that she totally got what the movie was about and that we saw this character in the same way. She's just such an expressive person; I was excited to see what she would do with the part.”

The director ended up standing back and letting her do her shirtwaist-dressed thing. “She's just so well-prepared and at the same time intuitive. What she brought to the role was such a sense of grace, timing, and beauty. Well, she brought just the right balance to the movie in all areas.”

Glamorous and funny for a change, Moss was given the chance to carry a movie with star power and anchor a large ensemble cast in a highly art-directed spoof.

“I loved playing her,” Moss says, “I really did. It was a comedy, but I still tried to play the truth, not the idea, of her, which is tricky in something like this.”

Her refusal to wink at the audience is the key to her success in the part and somehow relates to the self-described “fierce determination” that characterizes her whole career. Even as an age milestone beckons (Moss will turn 40 in August), and with all that means for female stars in Hollywood, she has found a niche playing women who seem self-contained yet vulnerable, working against their own instincts for human connection.

“I guess I'm attracted to the darker material. I mean, Fido might be a comedy—and, you know, a zombie movie—but I was interested in her struggle to become a mother. Because if you see the film, you realize that it does not exactly come naturally to this woman. It's a world in which only appearances matter. Even when I look at my mom—she had me in a hospital and made sure to have her hair done before she saw any visitors. I gave birth at home, and I sure didn't get my hair done for anybody!”

The concept of family life appears to inform all of her work now.

“It all changed when I became a mother. For the first time in my life, I felt I was doing something without having to do anything. When I do work, I choose to see every job as an opportunity to grow, as an actor and as a person. My favourite part of it is being part of a team, with everyone pulling in the same direction.”

Next up, she again returns to B.C., shooting in Victoria with Vancouver director Carl Bessai on a project called Normal. Not that it will be about conforming. She may be a team player, but Moss is most definitely a rebel when she needs to be.

“I've always been that girl. Tell me that I can't do something and I'll do it.”