NEW YORK — It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in ''The Gilded Age,'' for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of ''The White Lotus,'' which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, ''His Three Daughters,'' in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in ''Winning Time'' ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: ''Once Around,'' with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at Steppenwolf in 2010. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
''It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s,'' Coon says. ''I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did that all day. I thought how crazy you must go when you're alone like that, when your sole purpose is to have a baby.''
Coon grew up outside working-class Akron, Ohio, and Honey reminded her of some of her relatives — women either trapped in gender roles like Honey or strong-willed exceptions who defied them. Ever since, Coon has brought to life a wide array of women on screen with acute perceptiveness and fierce intelligence. She may be a character-actor chameleon resistant to movie stardom, but she doesn't blend in. A movie tends to stand up on its feet when Coon is on screen.
''Celebrities are encouraged to be the star of the show, because that's what they do. And I'm an actor. I'm not a celebrity,'' says Coon. ''I'm always going to be part of the ensemble. The storytelling should happen between people. I don't like the other thing. I'm not interested in selfishness. It's not fun.''