At first sight, Anna Faris is an unlikely candidate for comedy greatness. Despite parts in rom-coms such as 2005’s Just Friends,the 31-year-old actress was best known for her role as Cindy in the often tiresome Scary Movie spoof-horror franchise. Until this month, that is. Her new comedy, The House Bunny, has spent more than a month in the US top ten, grossing $45 million and counting.

Such is her newfound prominence that Faris has been invited to New York to host the long-running sketch show Saturday Night Live. As a fan of the SNL veterans Chevy Chase and Steve Martin, she is understandably giddy. “My parents don’t quite understand it but I’m really excited to be here,” she says. It’s not the first time her mother, a retired school worker, and father, an academic, have been bamboozled by her choices.

Take Smiley Face, in which she brilliantly portrayed a luckless stoner. “My mother was appalled. She was so mad. She said, ‘You’re a role model – how can you do this?’ ” So convincing was Faris that she won High Times magazine’s Stonette of the Year. “It’s the only award I’ve ever won,” she says. “Now there’s a gold bong on my mantle.” Has she used it? “I’ll just say it has been used.”

Quite what her mother made of The House Bunny is anyone’s guess. Faris plays Shelley, a Playboy Bunny living in Hugh Hefner’s mansion. Her only ambition in life is to become Miss November. Developed by Faris with the writers of Legally Blonde and Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison company, the film comes with a considerable Hollywood pedigree, co-starring Colin Hanks (son of Tom) and Rumor Willis (daughter of Bruce and Demi Moore). But it’s Faris who shines the brightest, as Shelley hooks up with a bunch of misfit college girls to help save their run-down sorority house.

Still, the actress acknowledges that playing a soft porn pin-up is a fine line to walk; it’s not exactly feminist and, in the wrong hands, could easily be overplayed and irritating. “It is difficult, the state of comedy, for women these days,” says Faris. “I think there’s pressure to win over the audience. There’s this idea that if you’re a young woman the audience must fall in love with you. There are wonderful leading ladies out there but I just wanted to do something slightly different to playing the girlfriend.”

It also meant Faris got to film in the Playboy mansion. “I didn’t know what to expect. It is weirdly innocent and it does make you feel like, ‘Gosh, having random sexual encounters isn’t that big a deal, is it?’ I got the idea that maybe it has seen wilder days, now that Mr. Hefner is settling down a bit.” As for Hef, who plays himself: “He’s a really charming and sweet gentleman – but he did stare at my chest a lot.” He even bewitched Faris’s mother, “who always hated Playboy”, at the premiere. “After a couple of drinks, she was hugging Hugh Hefner and telling him what a wonderful man he is.”

She has a brief nude scene in The House Bunny and Faris confesses the idea of being a real-life centrefold was quite appealing. She even got to do the cover of Playboy to promote the movie. “But I’m not naked in the magazine,” she stresses. Faris, though, is aware of the downside for the girls she befriended. “It’s their job to go to these parties,” she muses, “though it’s also their job to flirt with pretty unattractive older gentlemen. That part doesn’t seem quite so fun.”

Still, for the actress, who was born in Baltimore and raised in Seattle, all this must have been quite a thrill, not least because she was “such a late bloomer”. “Growing up, I was very short and I had braces,” she says. Her parents were academics, who supported her interest in the arts. “They always took us to see plays. They were always very encouraging, even when I wanted to quit acting. They never told me but I think they were a little disappointed.”

These feelings came when she was studying English at the University of Washington. “I’d been doing plays, commercials and voiceover work and I just decided I did not want such an unstable career. I just felt there was no way I could make a decent living.” She even had a job lined up at a London advertising agency – partly because she “really wanted to marry a British guy”. In the end, she cancelled her trip and decided to give LA a chance. “I had nothing to lose. I was used to being broke. I just thought, ‘I will live in LA and do whatever jobs I can find and if I’m happy at the end of the year, maybe I’ll stay.’ ”

Not long after, she was cast in Scary Movie,playing the Neve Campbell-alike Cindy, a role she’s reprised for three sequels. Since then, it’s been a case of the sublime (a scene-stealing role in Lost in Translation and a small part in Brokeback Mountain) to the ridiculous (Rob Schneider’s The Hot Chick). It’s no wonder Faris, who spends most of our interview giggling, has such an optimistic outlook. “I’m lucky that my life has changed in the sense that I get to do what I love.” She keeps clear of the LA party scene. “I don’t get paparazzi following me, I think because I’m so boring and don’t have much fashion sense.”

For all her career success, her love life has been less than perfect. “I’ve never been great at dating. LA can be a hard environment in that way and I don’t have too much experience in the dating world.” In 1999 she met the actor Ben Indra on the slasher movie Lovers Lane; the pair married five years later after a year-long engagement but separated in 2007. “I was in that relationship for eight years,” she says. “I tend to be ‘serial monogamous’.” Does she find it harder finding a man now she’s in her thirties? “Yeah . . . although in LA people tend to settle down a lot later in life. So most of my friends are single.”

Currently, Faris is with Chris Pratt, with whom she appears in the forthcoming comedy Young Americans. “We were friends for a while. We grew up in the same area, so we have a lot in common.” Isn’t dating a fellow actor dangerous? “I don’t know,” she sighs. “I’m the wrong person to ask.”

After turning down the role of the porn star Linda Lovelace because it was “too intense”, Faris is looking for more comedy roles. “I don’t have to travel to any dark places emotionally and I enjoy making people laugh.” She has a glut of them on the way, notably Observe and Report in which she co-stars with Seth Rogen as “the worst character I’ve ever played – horrible, bitchy, catty and mean”. She pauses. “I’ve thought about this a lot lately,” she says. “Being in comedy has made me a happier person.”

The House Bunny is released nationwide on October 10 2008

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• Oscars

• Cannes

Editor's choice

• Harry Potter to overtake James Bond as biggest franchise ever
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette