TORONTO -- It's a typical Toronto International Film Festival scenario. An overanxious reporter collects mounds of research to try to impress/connect with/wake an actress -- in this case, Parker Posey -- out of film-junket fatigue with a whammo question of singular clarity, insight and style. Past interviews have pointed out that Posey, in addition to being an accomplished actress, is also an accomplished mime, and, having suffered the trauma of three years of mime classes as an adolescent, the reporter hopes to share secrets of the silent art form, swap tall tales of the "I remember I was making a balloon horse for this one kid . . ." variety. Alas, the balloon bursts.

"Oh yeah, I made that up," she says simply, half-smiling, head cocked, so you're still not sure if she's telling the truth.

Of course. Actually being a mime would be too boringly predictable. Mainstream. Now, pretending to be a mime, that's alternative. It's pure Posey concentrate; she never behaves the way you expect.

But then, that's one of the prerogatives of being Queen of Indie Cinema, a title that Time magazine bestowed on her in 1997. Posey's made more than 40 films, mostly low-budget ones, since her breakout role as Mary, a fun-loving dilettantish party organizer forced to take a job at a library to pay her rent, in the 1995 sleeper hit Party Girl, followed by scene-stealing turns in dry ensemble comedies such as The Daytrippers, Suburbia and Clockwatchers.

Above all, there was 1997's The House of Yes, a searingly funny but breath-takingly black slice of Americana. Posey received critical acclaim for her role as a crazed, semi-incestuous fraternal twin sister with a Jackie-O fixation, perversely beautiful in a pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat accessorized with fake blood and brains. Her role won her a special award for acting at the Sundance Film Festival. More important, it cemented Posey's identity as the fearless liberator of women's roles for a generation of women tired of being forced to relate to Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts or any of a half-dozen stars with big hair and Colgate Simply White smiles.

The truth, however, is that Posey considers herself a working actor, not an artiste. Sure, it seems that directors Hal Hartley and Christopher Guest have her on speed dial (she's appeared in two films for each of them), but she's also made films such as You've Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, razor-sharp horror flick Scream 3, teen fluff Josie and the Pussycats and just plain fluff The Sweetest Thing. And you could hardly classify Sandra Bullock's role in Speed and Renée Zellweger's in Jerry Maguire -- two roles Posey lost out on -- indie characters.

"I don't have a big pile of scripts, that I look at and say, 'Hmm, that's not indie enough for me.' Doesn't happen. As an actor you wait, or you audition for parts," she says. She admits with ill-concealed frustration that she knows she's not a big enough celebrity to guarantee an audience for the monster-budget pictures, that she's often the third choice for the role. Sometimes, however, in the the case of Personal Velocity, her latest film, which opens today, she is the only choice. She doesn't even have to audition.

Directed by Rebecca Miller, Personal Velocity is based on Miller's own book of short stories of the same name. Broken into discrete vignettes, the film follows three women as their lives seem to shoot forward uncontrollably. Another Sundance fave, the picture picked up the Grand Jury Prize.

In Personal Velocity, Posey plays Greta, a cookbook editor with fidelity issues whose marriage falters when her professional life soars. While still neurotic, Greta is markedly less eccentric than what she's known for, a challenge that Posey was glad to accept.

"I play a pretty normal working married woman, because most of [my roles] from Scream 3 to Josie and the Pussycats are just comedies, and I was really excited to do this role," she said. "She's kind of self-sabotaging, not thinking, disguising freedom with not being self-aware. In the film, we get the psychology of why she's this way and the realization of what has led her to do this, and being able to play that moment is so rare, especially with the movies being made in Hollywood."

In person, Posey is much more subdued than her on-screen personas would have you believe. She's quite serious and reflective and open, her voice is tremulous, like a violin string being bowed, even as it sounds out Valley Girl cadences. Pulling out a pack of American Spirit cigarettes, she lights up, oblivious to the no-smoking sign in the Intercontinental Hotel, where she was holed up during the film festival.

The 34-year-old with the unlikely name (Parker is an homage to fifties model Suzy Parker) was raised in Laurel, Miss., the daughter of a car salesman. She started out as a dancer, taking ballet lessons from the age of six and, at 16, auditioned for the North Carolina School of the Arts. She wasn't accepted, although they suggested she try their drama program instead. She did, eventually studying acting at State University of New York, Purchase.

During her final year of school in the early nineties, she landed her first "major" role as Tess Shelby in television's As the World Turns -- the same soap that Meg Ryan started out on a decade earlier.

She's definitely no perky Ryan, however. Posey has a peculiar beauty: gregarious but with an edge, definitely not of the prefab Hollywood manufacture. Her chestnut brown hair is flecked with gold, freckles dust her face. Slightly crooked teeth show no trace of having been bound in metal during her teenage years.

Posey's slight dancer's frame always gave her a fragile cachet on-screen; in person she is so tiny she might disappear if you turn your head a fraction of an inch. Her clothes are ordinary but are steeped in the inimitable chic that only the genetically programmed for cool possess: She's wearing jeans that are much too long for her, the back hems shredded by wear, a denim button-down top covering a cream blouse. A giant shell pendant dominates her throat.

Even her hobbies reveal she's no celebrity brat: While some stars sought refuge in the bottom of a Yorkville shopping bag or a martini glass, Posey is enthusiastic about her recent trip to the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto. Aside from acting, her other passion is pottery, which she became hooked on a couple of years ago after discovering a studio around the corner from her New York apartment.

"It really grounds you, there's a whole language to it, people from all walks of life do it. It's a different space for your head to go, it's a creative moment there, that's a comforting place to be," she says. "If I don't work, and I don't have an outlet -- I do pottery -- I go crazy, because there is a lot going on inside, that's why I am an actor, so I'm constantly sponging and identifying."

At the moment, Posey's own personal velocity is taking it easy. She calls last year "the reflective year, the hermit year," where she's only worked on a couple of films: Personal Velocity and Hell on Heels, a movie of the week about cosmetics queen Mary Kay, also starring Shirley MacLaine. She's got a bit of a break before she starts her next project, A Mighty Wind, another film for Christopher Guest. "The life of a freelancer has its pros and cons . . . you don't know when your next job is coming, and most actors like myself [always think] it's their last job." Above all, however, she seems to be abdicating from her role as queen of the indies. "There was never the ceremony," she says archly, "It just sounds really corny.

"I act for a living," Posey says. "It's my job, it's my craft, it's my passion. It allows me to express what I go through in my life and lets me make discoveries about people. I believe I continue to grow and transform as an artist."

Whatever her role, she is certainly an actor who lives up only to her own expectations.