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NEW YORK -- Midway through her breakfast of grapefruit and poached eggs, comedian Sarah Silverman has a quasi-famous moment. Of sorts.
A tourist sitting with a friend at the next table looks at her and holds up a camera. Silverman smiles knowingly and turns toward the two women, ready to pose, only to be thrown off when the woman asks Silverman to take their picture. Silverman obliges, only to mock herself a minute later for her brief ego trip.
"It's that first moment of being like 'Oh, sure,'" she mugs, raising her eyebrows and smiling sardonically. "And then, 'Oh. Oh!' It's so embarrassing. That has happened before."
But that might change soon. Silverman, 35, has been a ribald and rude presence on the comedy circuit for more than a decade, attracting a cult following and delivering supporting turns in such films as The School of Rock and Evolution. But her star is about to shine brighter with her positively reviewed movie Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, now in theaters. It's an amalgamation of her salacious stand-up act and several crudely cute musical numbers.
In Silverman's repertoire, almost nothing is off-limits. She riffs on Ethiopian babies, Jews who drive German cars, Sept. 11, and the sexual proclivities of her boyfriend, comedian and talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Even though one of her jokes rankled the Asian community a few years ago -- an incident she addresses in the film -- Silverman isn't worried about being the female version of Andrew Dice Clay. Of the controversy surrounding her use of a derogatory term for Asian-Americans on NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien, she says: "It's not like I'm bitter about it. I have nothing to lose."
The one thing Silverman is hesitant to riff on is a woman's waistline. "I'm not on some stance against fat jokes about fat women. For me, unless it's so funny -- anything if it's funny enough -- those are the ones that tend to make my heart sink."
Still, she's not losing sleep about ruffling some PC feathers.
"If you're offended, it's your right," she says. "I never argue if people don't like it. You can't please everyone."
She punctuates her statement by flashing her sweet yet sardonic smile. Silverman is a lanky, coltish woman, dressed in tight jeans, a long-sleeved cotton shirt and sneakers. She is visibly tired after staying out late at a premiere the night before. What sparks her up is a call on her cellphone from Kimmel.
Kimmel, 38, doesn't get particularly annoyed when she mocks him. "He doesn't love it. But he doesn't freak out," she says.
Silverman, a self-described former class clown, attended New York University for one year. But the New Hampshire native has the cadence of the Los Angeles resident she now is.
Unlike so many other comedians, Silverman isn't chronically "on" during her conversation. She cracks jokes at her own expense and darts from topic to topic. What, for example, inspired her to make a movie?
"I was doing a run in L.A. and my friend -- I like your lip color. It's so natural. It just looks flushed. Are you Irish?" she says, before stopping herself. "All right, sorry, here we go."
She'd rather talk about her non-comedic pastimes.
"I like the simple things. Meeting a friend for lunch -- love it. I love television," Silverman says.
Her favorite show? "America's Next Top Model. Lost is Jimmy and (my) date show. We've seen every episode."
But this evening, Silverman proves it's hip to be square. She's going with Kimmel to see Huey Lewis in Broadway's Chicago.
Silverman says: "Jimmy is a huge Huey Lewis fan, unapologetically."
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