The star of You Kill Me talks about underwear, knights, and why Bill Pullman is going to beat her up.

In this weekend's black comedy You Kill Me, Téa Leoni plays Laurel, a woman who falls for a Polish mobster on break from his hit-man duties in order to get his drinking habit under control. And they meet at the mortuary he is working at while he is preparing her step-father for his funeral. Of course.

Leoni, whose big break-through came a decade ago when she played a Nora Wilde, a tabloid journalist in the TV sitcom The Naked Truth, found her co-star, Sir Ben Kingsley, to be surprisingly “vulnerable” in person.

“He's very interested. There is something about his interest that implies that he's not always sure that he's right,” Leoni explains. “I think the word 'delightful' could be applied to Ben. It was really a joy to work with him.”

Kingsley was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001. And although he doesn’t like to throw his title around, Leoni insisted on it. “I figured when was the next time I was going to be making out with a knight? So I thought it was really fun to call him ‘Sir Ben.’ I liked it.”

She is also quite a fan of Bill Pullman, who plays a supporting role in the film. “I think there are a lot of actors out there, like Bill, who have leading man good looks and are ultimately character actors,” she explains.

“I think sometimes that can confuse the powers that be. They're not really quite sure what to do with you. You're underused on one hand...you don't have that, I don't know what it is, that sort of…that leading man…there's some sort of normalcy or rationale that's missing from your persona.”

“Bill is sparky,” she continues. “You sit down and talk with him and he has maybe a very relaxed manner, but there's so much going on with him. I think that he'll probably, now a little bit as he's older, he's probably going to start working a lot more than he ever has. Because I think people will begin to see him as the true character actor that he is. He might kick my teeth in for saying that, but I mean it as actually a very big compliment because I think he is terrific.”

It can be argued that Leoni may also be thinking of herself when she makes these comments. As smart, funny, and strong as she is beautiful, Leoni often gets what one journalist termed “bitchy” roles. “I think often times when a female character is written in a film and she's damaged or complicated, there's a tendency to write her a little bitchy,” Leoni explains. “And it may be for fear that writers may have that if we get a delightful little actress in there, we'll miss the conniving bitch that we are trying to get across on the page.”

Leoni loved the script for You Kill Me, but she’s run into problematically-written women characters before. “I think the time I've really been up against that was not on this film at all, but actually on Family Man,” Leoni explains. “I read that script and they were having terrible trouble casting that part. It just read awful off the page to me. This was a woman--the whole movie depends on us wanting him to have made a different choice and to be with her. And yet she's a screaming BI-YOTCH on the page. A whining, nagging, witch. I wouldn't return to her for Thanksgiving!”

Her character in Spanglish, Deborah, was also a little tough to take. But in that case, Leoni felt it was warranted. “I really felt for her,” says Leoni. “It sort of broke my heart--her life, her point of view of the world. I think that would be a terrible place to be trapped. I mean, I was there for nine months and I nearly lost my mind.”

For Leoni, it’s looking past the bitchiness to find the real core of a character. “The thing in that to me was that's not the truth of it. She can have a lot of complaints, but not have to be just that bitch to get her complaints across.”

In You Kill Me, Leoni’s character Laurel clearly had a troubling past, the details of which are never revealed in the story. But the actress isn’t about to give up the narrative she created to get into character. “I can't tell you what that was. That is sort of my secret back story,” Leoni says. She is willing, however, to reveal one more unusual trick of her trade that she likes to employ.

“Honestly, I always start with the hair and the undergarments. And after I've nailed that, which takes me a couple of weeks, then I go just a little bit deeper,” she explains. “It's a stupid little thing that I do. And I guess it's just because in the morning I put on her underwear and not my own. And at the end of the day I take it off and take it home myself. Just want to be clear about that!”

As for You Kill Me? “Laurel was a Hanes girl. I've never been a Hanes girl before--not professionally or privately. It's actually pretty good underwear."

You Kill Me opens tomorrow, June 22, 2007 in limited release.

Click on ReelzChannel.com's You Kill Me page for clips from the movie and more!