Sarah Silverman foregoes the funny in the hard-hitting drama, 'I Smile Back'

SARAH SILVERMAN was in a good mood and ready to give the

Daily News

her A-game interview material.

"I've just been very aloof and giving one word answers until now," she said, when the Daily News entered her press room at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this fall.

Silverman stars in "I Smile Back," a heavy, heavy drama about a drug-addicted suburban housewife who can't get out of her own way when it comes to living her own life and living with her family.

It's a different kind of role for the comedian, one she wasn't necessarily looking for when she signed on.

"They sent me the book and asked, 'Would you attach yourself to this, and I said, 'Let me see a script.' I didn't know how that stuff worked. I'd never been asked to be attached to something. But I said, 'Sure.' I didn't have to think very hard about it because I never thought it would get made.

"If this was a movie that was getting made, they'd have a movie star attached to it. Right?"

So, did the studios jump when they heard that the raunchy, topical comic was attached to play a pill-popper?

"Oh, yeah," Silverman laughed. "Within two years they got the funding."

Silverman understands that the film may be a surprise to fans expecting to see her sharp-barbed comedy.

"It is relentless," she said of the movie. "That's a word I would use. I told the director, 'Even "Precious" has relief.' "

Silverman, who's acted in films, sketch comedy and even as part of her stand-up act, said she took the role of Laney because, "Who am I to say, 'No'? It seemed interesting and very subjective. If I could play her objectively enough, people would walk out of the movie and have very different takes on it. I like that. That's a cool thing about art.

"People are either going to have compassion for her, or empathy or sympathy, or they're going to say, 'F--- this bitch and her white people. First-world problems.' What people see in this movie is going to be completely informed by their own experience."

In "I Smile Back," the audience sees Laney taking drugs, barhopping and having an affair with the husband of her best friend, but Silverman stressed that signals of Laney's despair were not always clear to those closest to her - as in many similar real-life family situations.

"There are signs that the audience is privy to," Silverman said, "but I'm sure there are a lot of people in Laney's life that would go, 'Oh, my kids play with her kids, and she's really fun.'

"But . . . the teacher at school knows she's f---ed up."

Silverman, who told Glamour magazine recently about her own battle with depression, wondered herself about the cause of Laney's woes.

"Is it chemical? Is it from her sad childhood? There are people with far sadder childhoods who persevere and come out winning. It's just one, individual story.

"They say that if you live in the past that's depression, and if you live in the future that's anxiety. That's why you need to live in the moment, ideally," Silverman said.

"But I think with Laney, because of her past, she's so worried about the future. She lives with so much anxiety - what if I ruin my kids? - and that could be mistaken for some kind of modesty. But she's totally consumed with the terror that she's going to ruin these children that she loves so much. That's all-consuming. There's no room for anybody else. It's a self-obsessive state.

"So you can have compassion for her, but don't mistake her plight as any kind of modesty. She's so self-obsessed, even if that self-obsession is that she's a monster. Or might be a monster.

"Her own fears are her self-fulfilling prophesy, and I think that's true for a lot of people.

"Certainly a lot of comedians."

"I Smile Back" has not been released in Philadelphia-area theaters but is available from video on demand.