TORONTO—You’re going to be seeing a lot of Toni Collette soon, if you haven’t already. In addition to the bus-stop posters featuring her and Dylan McDermott promoting the CBS series Hostages, Collette was at the Toronto International Film Festival recently with two films: Lucky Them (in theatres in 2014) and Enough Said (now playing).

In the former, she plays a washed-up rock journalist; in the latter—of which she spoke in a private interview with the Georgia Straight—she plays Sarah, best friend to protagonist Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and a woman with a complicated relationship with her husband, Will (Ben Falcone).

Enough Said is right up Collette’s alley. The actor has figured in a boatload of quirky dramedies, such as this year’s The Way Way Back and 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, not to mention her last shot at television, the Diablo Cody–created United States of Tara, in which she played a woman dealing with multiple-personality disorder.

“I think the fact that they still reflect life,” Collette said, when asked why she takes on these types of films. “I don’t really respond to those big, broad comedies; I like it when you can be laughing one minute and be crying the next. Watching film is almost a bit of a narcissistic thing, because, really, you want to see yourself. You want to feel something and you want to recognize something. I think the films that I’m drawn to are because of that. Most of the films that I’m in have that quality where they can kind of traverse genre. It’s not comedy or drama; it’s kind of a beautiful mixture.”

For Enough Said, it was meeting writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Walking and Talking, Friends With Money), along with Holofcener’s script and reputation, that made the Australian native jump at the chance to play the role of Sarah.

“I was in L.A. and I had a meeting with Nicole,” she recalled. “I was told before the meeting that this wasn’t about the project she was about to make, it’s just a general meeting so we can meet each other for the future. And I knew she was about to make this movie, so I was a little bit bummed. And we met at a little coffee place in Santa Monica. She’s so easy to talk to, so grounded and open. She has this kind of sense of wonder, the way she sees things. And we had this little chat, and I thought that was nice and maybe down the line we could work together or whatever. And then out of the blue, I was offered this part…”

As far as the film’s somewhat sour take on the realities of relationships, the mother of two can only sum it up in one way. “Life is weird, man,” she said. “It’s a miracle that anyone ever actually really connects. We’ve all got so much shit going on.…There’s a lot of finger-crossing.”