Molly Shannon is of course best known for a variety of effusive, outrageous characters strewn across six seasons of Saturday Night Live, most notably socially awkward, physically clumsy, armpit-sniffing Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher, whom she debuted on the show and later took to the big screen with 1999’s Superstar. In real life, though, the surprise is just how adult and normal Shannon seems.

You wouldn’t mistake her for serene, per se; the quick speech still flows, leaving you reflecting about how familiar it sounds, without being overly characteristic. Still, it’s less to do with nerves — a staple of some of Shannon’s best characters — and more seemingly a case of simply getting ahead of a thought, and excited about sharing it.

Scary Movie 4, Talladega Nights) and a few television projects (Mike White’s Cracking Up, a guest-starring role on Scrubs) over the last several years.

Shannon was hoping that the one-two April 2007 punch of Sing Now or Forever Hold Your Peace and Year of the Dog (above), arriving next week on DVD, would herald a successful return to lead roles. Alas, neither film did much at the box office and, in fact, most people are probably not even aware the former was even released. Then there was the matter of the NBC TV pilot The Mastersons of Manhattan. Though well regarded, it was not picked up as a fall series.

Given the current mega-success of Will Ferrell, one can forget that the transition from Saturday Night Live to films can be a notoriously fickle one. For every Adam Sandler, there are three or four Jim Breuers. For female not-ready-for-prime-time-players, that changeover can present an even greater degree of difficulty.

Even at age 42, though, there’s still a feeling that Shannon has time to find her feature film stride. She recently wrapped a fall Lifetime TV movie, More of Me. A female-driven echo of Michael Keaton’s Multiplicity, it features Shannon as a stressed out housewife who morphs into three different versions of herself to handle the load. And no matter how that does in the ratings, Shannon will be just fine. “I don’t mind struggling because sometimes I feel like it can help you create something that you might not have thought of,” she says. “Usually, something comes out of that struggle. So that’s kind of the way I look at it. I try not to blame anyone.” For the full feature piece, from FilmStew, click here.