HOLLYWOOD Jennifer Tilly forges ahead despite early advice to quit

Tilly's latest film is the animated Disney flick 'Home on the Range.'
SCRIPPS HOWARD
When Jennifer Tilly's agent told her she'd be starring opposite Dame Judi Dench in her next movie, she was thrilled. She would share every scene with Dench, he promised. Then he told her the bad news -- she would be playing a cow.
Unpacking that sweet, sultry voice, Tilly portrays the holistic heifer in Disney's animated feature "Home on the Range," which opened Friday.
She never did get to meet Dench, as all their tracks are recorded separately. But then, that's practically the story of her life.
Tilly, the shapely brunette who helped burnish such films as "Bound," "Liar Liar" and "Bullets Over Broadway," waited for years before she landed a paying part.
Meanwhile her sister, Meg Tilly, hit pay dirt one month after she arrived in LA. "I'd gone off to college, majored in theater and moved to LA and tried to make it as an actress," says Jennifer.
Meg had been a ballet dancer, but hurt her back in a fall.
"She came out to visit me and said, 'I'll just be an actress too.' I remember thinking, 'You don't just DECIDE to be an actress. I've trained all my life.' I thought I would help her because I felt bad for her," says Tilly.
"I helped her do r & eacute;sum & eacute;s, which was just like in college, you just make everything up. 'Write down plays you've been in at high school, but don't say high school; say the "Prometheus Players" or something like that."'
Something to prove
Tilly had to overcome a lack of encouragement.
She says she was "pathologically shy" when she was young, and consequently not very popular in high school.
"I was literally the last person to be picked for the teams."
During a final theater exam in college, she says she was told she had no talent and should switch majors.
Her mother had advised her to attend college so she would have something to fall back on.
"Because you'll never make it as an actress," she'd admonished her daughter.
But she pressed on. After being advised to change majors, she "got really mad," she says.
I thought, 'What do you people know? I'm not going to change my major. I'm going to be more successful than anybody.' That's another time when I said I'm not going to let anybody else's opinion make me who I am."