Jennifer Tilly makes so many independent movies that her life sometimes revolves around film festivals. In fact, she made "Saint Ralph" (opening here Friday at several theaters), while she was promoting another low-budget picture (a spoof of Canadian show-biz called "Hollywood North") at the Toronto Film Festival.

"I was getting ready for Toronto when I got this call about a movie that was going to be shooting there," she said by phone from Los Angeles. "A lot of actors were in town for the festival, so they planned the shooting schedule around that."

At first she was wary that the picture might be something cheap and silly — she imagined "Murder at the Toronto Film Festival" — but reading director Matthew McGowan's script convinced her that she'd have to find the time to do it.

The story revolves around a priest (Campbell Scott) who helps a 14-year-old boy (Adam Butcher) prepare for the Boston marathon in the mid-1950s. Tilly plays a nurse who takes care of his bedridden mother and encourages him.

"I was so interested in how Ralph was going to win," she said. "By the time I finished reading it, I was crying. It really touched me. I did worry that if they don't get a good kid, we're screwed. But they got a good kid."

She worked for only three days of the 18-day shoot. When she did her scenes, they hadn't even cast Scott, but by then she had confidence in McGowan.

"Some directors can be so uptight, especially in a situation like that," she said, "but he was just the coolest guy, very laid-back."

Since her film debut as a high-school student in an early Demi Moore vehicle, "No Small Affair" (1984), Tilly has worked with dozens of directors, including Peter Bogdanovich (she played gossip columnist Louella Parsons in his "The Cat's Meow"), the Wachowski brothers ("Bound") and Woody Allen, who cast her in "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994).

The part earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress, much to her surprise. She expected her co-star, Dianne Wiest, to be nominated, but there had been no campaign for Tilly's performance, and she had not been mentioned in any of the awards leading up to the nominations.

"It's not the magic bullet people think it is, but it certainly helped," she said. Wiest, who had much more screen time in "Bullets" than Tilly, ended up with the Oscar, but the nomination drew attention to Tilly's distinctive voice and comic style. (Voice-only roles in "Monsters, Inc." and "Stuart Little" followed.)

It also helped distinguish her from her younger sister, Meg, who had earned a 1985 Oscar nomination for "Agnes of God." The two had hoped to make a movie together, but Meg retired in the mid-1990s.

Retiring just isn't Jennifer's style, as she proved in June when she won the Ladies-Only No Limit Texas Hold 'Em World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Although she collected a $158,000 prize, she's more impressed with the bracelet that came with it.

"In poker, it's like a gold medal or an Academy Award," she said. Although she's been playing poker for 15 years, she attributes her winning streak partly to luck ("I'd never had a royal flush before") and her boyfriend, Phil Laak, a professional player.

"I used to play so poorly, I had the feeling I was an impostor when I won [that prize]," she said. "I went to my room and didn't come out for three days." She also got offers to appear at poker tournaments and in poker movies. But she'd already played poker in "Seed of Chucky" (2004), and says she won't do it on-screen again.

Of the many movies she's made, "Bound" and "Bullets Over Broadway" are her favorites, though she has a soft spot for the 1989 gambling comedy, "Let It Ride," and several others. She also defends the 2002 TV remake of "The Magnificent Ambersons," in which she played the spinster Fanny Minafer, regretting only that "we ran out of money and we were chopping scenes right and left."

She claims she didn't make several of the movies listed in her Internet Movie Database biography, and she wishes she hadn't made some of the ones that were mostly done to pay the rent.

"IMDb never lets you forget your mistakes," she said. "But I think I've made 10 to 20 really good movies."

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com