Funny girl

FOR an actress whose movie has just been put on the shelf, Michelle Monaghan is in a remarkably chirpy mood. Gone Baby Gone, the missing child drama in which she stars, has been pulled from release by distributors fearful its storyline is too close for comfort to real life events.

Monaghan doesn't dispute the decision. "It was right to be sensitive," she says. She can still smile because she has another movie coming out, the latest blue-tinged comedy from the Farrelly brothers.

This outrageous comedy is in much the same dirty vein as their earlier There's Something About Mary, in which Cameron Diaz was creative with what she thought was hair gel and Ben Stiller got something very personal caught in his trouser zip.

Stiller stars in The Heartbreak Kid too, as a man discovering true love on his honeymoon - with a woman who's not his wife. That's Monaghan as down-to-earth Miranda.

She might well have played the wife Lila, the role that Malin Akerman plays. "When I read the script, I was like, 'give me either role and I'll run with it'," she says, sitting cross-legged on a sofa in London hotel fresh from the film's premiere at the Deauville Film Festival.

"I ended up auditioning with Ben and Peter Farrelly, I did both roles and they ended up hiring me for Miranda. At the audition, we ended up improvising. I'm a big fan of improvisation but can't say I'm great at it, but Ben is such a pro. They said, 'let's improvise' and that's really, really daunting.

"We had a lot of fun. If you can make Ben Stiller laugh, it's like making your folks proud. We carried that over to the making of the film. If you do something 20 times and the crew stop laughing you know you're in trouble. There were so many times I would say something that was not funny and, in the blink of an eye, Ben would say something in response and make me look hysterical.

"That's a testament of what kind of actor he is to work with, making the other actor look better than they really are, a really nice thing for him to do."

Monaghan likes both comedy and drama, although she finds comedy more challenging than anything. "In preparation for a drama you can do a lot of character research, and know what you want to achieve or project throughout the course of the film. In a comedy, you can't prepare to be funny and that's walking into the unknown, which is really scary for me," she says.

"When you're doing comedy, you hope you're in a good mood on the day and then you're prepared to push the envelope and try anything. I'm not a comedian, I'm an actor doing comedy.

"It's really following the lead of Ben. Fortunately, the Farrellys create an environment in which you're almost expected to embarrass yourself. They give you a gift as an actor to do or say anything you want. For me, that was essential making this film. Ninety-five per cent of the time what you do is fall on your face - literally. I broke my toe."

Her breakout performance came in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer, followed by playing Tom Cruise's leading lady in Mission: Impossible III. She'll soon be seen alongside Patrick Dempsey in Made Of Honour and Eagle Eye with Shia LaBeouf.

Stiller did a memorable takeoff of Cruise at the MTV Awards, leaving Monaghan in the position of having worked with both stars. "Tom said to me, 'you know Ben did that sketch and it's pretty spot on, he's really got my laugh down'. They're working together at the moment. Ben is to comedy, what Tom is to action. They are both incredibly focused on what they do," she says. The Farrellys sense of humour is "right up my alley - I'm pretty blue", she says. Her Kiss Kiss experience was something special. Nothing compares to her first lead role.

Life is different on a Farrelly brothers' set. "It's so goofy, so adolescent all the time. I think they're perpetual 15-year-olds with hearts of gold," she says.

She describes the regular egg tossing contests on the set, which involves people throwing eggs at each other and trying to catch them.

Monaghan could have ended up a journalist. That was what she studied at university before coming to realise she wasn't cut out for it. She didn't know if she could be objective, finding it was more about creating than finding a story.

She auditioned to play a model in her first film, Perfume, following that as Richard Gere's secretary in Unfaithful. "Most of my scenes were cut but after that I thought, 'I'm going to give acting a real shot'. I love this job and want to do it as long as I can."

* The Heartbreak Kid (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow.