When Paul Thomas Anderson first approached Regina Hall about a role in his upcoming film, she thought he was going to ask for landscaping advice. The two are next-door neighbors in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, and he’d wandered over during her backyard renovation. Hall — a longtime fan of the auteur — had been trying to get a meeting with Anderson for years, ever since Boogie Nights, then again after Magnolia. “And my agent was like, ‘You’re not going to have a general with Paul Thomas Anderson — ever,’ ” she says, laughing.

But there, in her garden, Anderson told her he was going to send her a script.

The film was One Battle After Another, Anderson’s high-octane adaptation of Vineland, Thomas Pynchon’s anarchic 1990 novel about a crew of former leftist revolutionaries — the French 75 — living in a slightly more dystopian version of present-day America. Hall, 54, plays Deandra, a group leader who is tasked with protecting the teen daughter (played by Chase Infiniti) of their ex-bomb maker (Leonardo DiCaprio) after an old enemy resurfaces. Hall jumped at the part — “She represents the purest intentions of the French 75,” she says — but if she’s honest, she’d have jumped at anything Anderson offered her. “I’m not going to lie,” she says, “he could have said we’re doing an adult film in Chatsworth, and I would have been like, ‘Sure.’ “

Once the formal offer arrived, Hall realized she had no idea how the movie was going to work. For one thing, it’s Anderson’s most commercially ambitious film yet, complete with car chases, explosions and shootouts. For another, Deandra is a far more internal, emotionally restrained part than any of the wisecracking, quick-witted characters Hall is best known for.

Originally from Washington, D.C., she grew up in a family where telling jokes at the dinner table was considered the highest form of communication. But when she first started pursuing an acting career — after graduating from NYU with a master’s in journalism — it took her a while to realize her sense of humor might just be her most bankable skill set. In fact, that didn’t happen until she auditioned for Keenen Ivory Wayans in 2000.

“During that moment, I realized how other people were reacting to me,” she says of her light-bulb epiphany. Of course, she got the part in Wayans’ Scary Movie, launching a career that’s since included everything from prestige television (Ally McBeal, Black Monday) and breakout studio hits (Girls Trip) to critically acclaimed indie work (Support the Girls, Honk for Jesus. Save Your Souls).

On the set of One Battle After Another, she leaned heavily on Anderson’s direction. “Since Deandra is so interior, I had to communicate what she is thinking visually, and I’d do a scene and just be like, ‘Did you feel anything, Paul?’ ” she says. “I always wondered what goes on in that head of his, what happens in that brain, but he always has complete clarity.” In one early sequence, Hall and the rest of the French 75 crew pull off a post-bank robbery car chase — a first for the actress. “The script just said, like, ‘chaos TBD,’ and then we’re in the car filming, and I’m like, this is bigger than ‘chaos TBD!’ ”

Working with Anderson has whet her appetite for auteurs, but Hall hasn’t abandoned her comedic roots. Twenty-five years after Scary Movie premiered, it’s still the film most people recognize her from, and she’s planning to reunite with co-star Anna Faris for a reboot. “If you go back and look at that first Scary Movie, it really was a hard R rating, and that is oddly refreshing for people now because it’s so unapologetically insane,” she says. She just wrapped a new comedy opposite Will Ferrell from Neighbors director Nicholas Stoller and is awaiting the script for the long-teased Girls Trip sequel.

In the meantime, she’s taking time to enjoy both the metaphorical and literal roses. “I can’t believe I’ve been able to get to know Paul, to see him in both Dad mode and PTA mode,” she says. “After all this, I finished my yard, Paul did his yard, and it all came full circle.”

This story appeared in the Sep. 3 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.