She has been electrocuted, hatcheted, murdered by a doll with her soul trapped inside it. She has also notched up an epic kill count of her own, decapitating one victim with a nail file, eviscerating another and melting one unfortunate’s face off with boiling water. And that was before she joined “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

“At least in the ‘Chucky’ movies you get stabbed in the front,’’ Jennifer Tilly says coolly, shooting a knowing look at this reporter as she lands the rimshot.

We are in a booth of the Margaux restaurant at the Marlton Hotel in Greenwich Village. It is midafternoon and we are the only customers in the place. Ms. Tilly is wearing a simple black minidress with a flounced neckline cut low. Décolletage is her wardrobe default.

Picking at a mesclun salad, Ms. Tilly appears young enough to force a double-take; at 66, she has spent four decades in the public eye. The Academy Award nomination she sometimes fudges in conversation to make seem like a win came so long ago that Bill Clinton was president.

That was for her inspired portrayal of a mobster’s floozy hellbent on a theatrical career in Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” The role, as written, was a camp inside a parody inside a million show business clichés. And it was a keystone in a career whose watchword could be “meta.”

Ms. Tilly has a knack for embodying characters who somehow stand above or outside themselves. Think the scream queen Tiffany Valentine in the endlessly recurring “Chucky” horror series. Think of her stylized lesbian femme fatale, Violet, in the thriller “Bound,” the directorial debut of Lana and Lilly Wachowski. Think of her turn as a conniving gold-digger in the Jim Carrey comedy “Liar Liar.”