Jennifer Tilly never wanted to be a demented doll’s gal pal.
The Hollywood siren said she had come off a career high with an Oscar Nomination in 1994, when her agent called with an offer for her next role.
It wasn’t exactly the prestige picture she had been hoping for — it was the then-latest installment in the notorious “Child’s Play” slasher pic franchise, “Bride of Chucky.”
Tilly says she was first disgusted by the idea of being Chucky’s bride and “fought tooth and nail” against doing it. But little did she know it would be come perhaps the signature role of her career.
“I said, ‘A Chucky movie?! I am not doing a Chucky movie!,” she told Page Six.
“Because I just came off of ‘Bullets Over Broadway,’ an Oscar nomination, and I thought I was gonna be like Dame Judi Dench or something.”
Tilly, 63, who charmingly revealed she used to have a “hard-on to do major motion pictures” says a few things changed her mind. Not the least of which was the pay.
“Of course they were offering me a lot of money,” she confessed before adding that the script “was just so funny and witty and also poignant.”
What also helped was finding out that the flick, which came out in 1998, was being helmed by acclaimed Hong Kong director Ronny Yu.
She took the role and the rest is horror movie history. The “Liar Liar” star has gone on to star in four Chucky films and now has a television series simply called “Chucky” which follows a vintage Chucky doll unsurprisingly causing bloody havoc in an “idyllic American town.”
“The only thing that can kill Chucky is bad box office and that hasn’t happened so far,” she quipped, before noting that “I feel like I’m hanging on by a thread. I know I can’t play Tiffany forever. I feel like eventually, I’ll have to pass the baton onto a newer, younger generation.”
Offscreen, Tilly is an accomplished poker player and the first celebrity to win a World Series of Poker tournament.
“I think I play better than a lot of the male poker players and what a woman has is that they have that primal sense when something isn’t right,” she explained. “And also being an actor I’m very good at reading people and I’m good at knowing when people are bluffing … But the main thing about poker is not having fear.
“And I play really, really high stakes poker. But if you’re afraid of the money, you have to think of the money as tips or tools. You can’t think like, Oh my god, if I call here, am I wrong? I’m going to be out, you know? thousands of dollars, right? You have to go with your gut.”
“Chucky” premieres Oct. 21 on SYFY.