Melissa Leo has spent much of her 25-year career as an anonymous actress. Despite appearing on the long-running 1990s TV show "Homicide," not many people could pick Leo out of a lineup. But that’s all changed.

Thanks to her role as Ray Eddy in "Frozen River," Leo joins the vaunted "group of five" along with Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway and Angelina Jolie as one of 2009’s best actress nominees. The independent film, written and directed by Courtney Hunt, follows two women forced into drastic measures to survive and provide for their families. Leo recently spoke about newfound fame at age 48 with Melissa Silverstein, wowOwow’s correspondent and founder of the website Women & Hollywood.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: So Melissa, my description of you is as a blue-collar actress — someone who just toils but doesn’t necessarily get the recognition. Would you agree with that definition?

MELISSA LEO: I call us workaday actors.

MS: Why did "Frozen River" resonate so much with "workaday" people and throughout the world?

ML: I think everything worked. I’ve never been so intimately involved in the production of a film. And I do understand film from an actor’s viewpoint. And from this actor’s viewpoint, everything from the short, to the child the writer/director conceived and gave birth to in the midst of the project, worked to tell the story. And everyone that joined us in Plattsburgh joined us on the back of that script. Everyone loved it and wanted to actualize it. And we got lucky.

MS: But it feels like more than luck. Did you always sense that this could be like a potentially career-changing role for you?

ML: Yes, I did. It’s not the only time I’ve ever felt it. But I certainly did with this. I really understood the juiciness of the role, my aptness for it, my aptness for the environment in which we would shot and the joyful willingness with which I would help her accomplish the task.

MS: What’s also so interesting is how the film seems to be resonating even more now because of our bad economic times. It’s kind of like the people on the margins — these women’s stories — they just cut right to the heart of things. Do you agree with that?

ML: Yeah, everything was so just right. Before I met [director] Courtney [Hunt], they [the leads] were cigarette smugglers. Then lo and behold we read in the newspapers that people are moving in together in these tight times. This is where our picture ends, these two women have decided that perhaps one household will be cheaper than two. Artists know how to reflect the times just before they are the times.

MS: You just go along with the ride and you don’t judge her in her illegalities — because you could.

ML: Yes. Thank goodness. You could just look sideways at Ray the whole time because of what she is doing. But we have taken this film to Marrakesh, Morocco and to France — it’s spreading all over. The French love "Frozen River."

MS: Really? Why do you think?

ML: Because of exactly what you’re just describing. There are issues of poverty and immigration, such present-day issues. The heart of the film is about parenting, mothers doing anything they can for their children’s lives to be better than theirs.