Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Savages Andrew Schwartz/Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

How did you respond to all the pets in this movie?
Well I'm highly allergic to cats. So for some reason, karmically, there's a cat in every role I take. And it's not just a little allergy. I mean it's a severe allergy. So I always have to run to the allergist and try and explain to the movie that, like, this isn't a little thing; this is really a big thing. Because people don't believe you! When you tell them [you] have a severe allergy to cats, they think you just sneeze. They don't understand that my eyes will swell, my throat will swell, and the movie will shut down. But I've somehow managed to get through it. And I love dogs. I adore them.

Do you think there're a lot of nuanced, complex roles rather than stereotypes offered at the moment?
It seems to me that there are a lot of them out there. This season is a great example. There are some wonderful movies right now. Look at Lars and the Real Girl and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Now, granted, these all tend to be more independent films. They're not really indies anymore. No indie is really an indie anymore. They're bigger than that. But I think there are certainly [these type of roles], and that also has a lot to do with the actor. You can take a very shallow script and you can flesh it out to a point where it is sort of nuanced and deep. But the question is whether the movie will hold it. You have to be careful about that because sometimes you can overact in something, and the story won't hold it. You may have done all this beautiful work but you have to know exactly where to pitch something.

There is some buzz about you being on the Oscar list potential. How does that impact an actor?
You have to make a choice about how it's going to affect you. It's really nice. It's a really high compliment. It's a really nice thing. It's certainly better than hearing: "Boy, that was really not good. She sucked! That was not a good movie." It's important for a film, so that's the thing that I'm the happiest about. It's a very nice compliment for me. And these small films that are not about razzmatazz entertainment — not that there's anything wrong with razzmatazz entertainment, I love that, too — but for these films that are a little more layered and force the audience to engage in a way that others don't, it's important that people see that. And so for that I'm thrilled.

How is wedding planning going? [Linney recently became engaged to boyfriend Marc Schauer.]
Fine. We're still just trying to figure it all out: about schedule and time and where and how many people and whether or not we have a wedding or we run away and elope. I just don't know.

And what do you have coming up next?
A Merchant Ivory film filmed City of Your Final Destination, and an HBO mini series on John Adams.