For more than three decades, Mary-Louise Parker has been one of America’s finest stage actresses, creating distinctive characters in more than a dozen roles, earning Tony nominations for “Prelude to a Kiss,”  “How I Learned to Drive,” “Proof,” “Reckless,” and “The Sound Inside” (and winning for “Proof” and “Sound Inside”). But while she found a good match for her darkly comic and off-beat persona on TV two decades ago in “Weeds,” she seemingly never really found a leading role in a film that so suited her sensibility. Now she’s starring in “Omni Loop,” the second feature from writer-director Bernardo Britto. Parker plays Zoya, a scientist with plenty of regrets and a black hole rapidly growing in her heart. But while she only has days to live, she also has an endless cache of pills that let her go back five days in time. She enlists a struggling young scientist, Paula (Ayo Edebiri) to help her solve the mystery of time travel so she can fix her past and her heart.  The movie opens at the Laemmle Glendale and on VOD on Friday. Britto and Parker spoke recently by video about the film, with Parker holding her dog, Ramon, who didn’t feel well, in her lap.  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  Q: Where did the idea for this come from?  Britto: It’s always hard to pinpoint, but it came from dealing with the death of someone close to me. I was 26 or 27 when I started writing and I was thinking a lot about what I was doing and who I wanted to be and those decisions started to feel important for the first time– when you’re 20 you can just kind of do whatever without thinking about it. So I was thinking about life from both of those vantage points.  And I was also thinking about all the usual things I think about – time travel and black holes. Then it was really easy. It only took eight years to write.  Q: Since “Groundhog Day,” this idea of playing with time and being stuck in a loop has become fairly common. Did that make it easier because the audience understands the concept or challenging because you need to subvert expectations? Britto: It’s more fun for me since I’m doing something different. We already are familiar with the basic premise but I can subvert it —because Zoya isn’t stuck in the loop. The fact that going back is her choice at the end of every loop is what’s interesting. This is about a person who doesn’t want to move forward, who wants to move even further back into her own life.  Q: Mary-Louise, you’ve been playing quirky and compelling characters on stage for decades, but I don’t know that you’ve had a film role like this. Parker: For a long time it was tricky for me to leave my kids for a movie. I’m a single mother and I just got both of them in college this year. So I’d do things intermittently, but usually, honestly, to make money, and something that would just fit in a certain timeframe. I could do theater and stay at home.  But this was one of the first things I did for me. The first time Bernardo and I spoke we talked for three hours and then got disconnected, and I left him a message saying, “I could talk some more if you wanted.” He was so clearly an artist – anyone who has the confidence to say, “There’s a woman with a black hole in her heart and a little shrinking man in a box” because that’s the reality they see, that gives you confidence in them. It was great to find something worth committing to and inconveniencing everyone for. Q: What was the collaboration like? Britto: I understand my limitations as a writer: I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother and Mary-Louise has two incredible children, so she was really able to make that feel real, where you can see things in her eyes that feel like a real memory. Mary-Louise is not just a great actor, she’s a phenomenal writer, although she says she’s a good editor. But it’s just that she understands drama better than anyone else in the world.  Q: On stage, a play is alive and different every night and you’re always adjusting. How different is making a film where your work is captured and then taken by a director into the editing room to cut up?  Parker: I don’t watch my performances, partly because I don’t feel as confident about myself on film and what I’m able to convey – I feel that way on a stage and most people don’t – and partly because I don’t trust whoever’s going to edit it. But Bernardo was the director and editor and I trusted him. Plus, I hate looping lines after. There are boom mics all around and they put a mic pack on you and rubber on your shoes and it becomes all about the sound. Even if the audience doesn’t know that a line is dubbed I think they feel it. It just separates you and impinges on the reality just a little bit. Bernardo said, “I’m not going to make you do that” and I didn’t have to do any.  Britto: I was just trying to capture the performance as it happened on set. I didn’t even want to mishmash things together from Take 2 and Take 4. I want to present it as I experienced it and will use the tools of cinema to get the shot I want but I’m hands-off with the performance. I tried to give the cast as much range and ownership over the characters to take it in their direction. Q: Bernardo, did making the movie make you look at life differently?  Britto: It’s just understanding that those questions and concerns are always going to be there so it’s more about me finding some acceptance with the fact that I’ll never really be satisfied and that I’ll be asking those questions.  Q: Mary-Louise, did playing this role look back on your life differently? Parker: They say depression is living in the past, anxiety is living in the future, and I don’t think I could examine the past any more than I already do, so it’s something I have in common with the character. Are there things I wish I’d done differently? I wish I had interacted with this person in the coffee shop differently just two days ago and I wish I had worded answers differently. But I wouldn’t have had this present moment without that past – I’d like to erase some things that happened to me, but without them I wouldn’t have met Bernardo and done this movie.  Q: That’s a good attitude. Can you hold that in your head every day? 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