You knew going into this season of “The Leftovers” that it would be its last. Did you have time to nurse concerns that another role wouldn’t soon come your way?

When I was in grad school, my grandmother was always sending me clippings from the newspaper. And I remember she sent me a quote, from the entertainment section of The Akron Beacon Journal. Basically — I’m paraphrasing — it said: “You just don’t know if you’re ever going to work again. Dame Judi Dench.” I said, “Ah, this anxiety never goes away.”

Going back to when you were doing “Virginia Woolf,” did that experience change things for you?

Yeah, I met my husband in that play. It changed my life.

What about professionally?

I just feel like somebody who’s still trying to get jobs. It doesn’t feel different to me. Now I’m on a list of 12 actresses instead of 22, and I’m 12th, instead of 22nd. I’m not No. 1 or No. 2.

Did your role as Ben Affleck’s levelheaded sister in “Gone Girl” help?

The fact that opportunity in “Gone Girl” opened up — I made a tape in my living room in Chicago, and I went to New Orleans for a wedding, and they called me and said, “You need to be in L.A. on Monday.” Then they didn’t let me meet David [Fincher, the film’s director] for a week. HBO wouldn’t release me because they didn’t know if [“The Leftovers”] was getting picked up, and [“Gone Girl”] said, “We don’t want David to meet you if he can’t actually have you.” So I was in L.A. for the first time in my life with no smartphone. It was all very unusual.