“I bleed for movies,” Aubrey Plaza told me in an interview over the summer, just seconds before the ground began to tremble.

We had met for brunch at Little Dom’s, a hip Italian restaurant in Los Angeles that was unusually quiet until that low rumble began. Frozen, we stared at each other as the windows rattled — bum-bum-BAM — and then quieted. It was quick and violent, as though someone had seized the place and given it a brisk, get-yourself-together shake.

Plaza’s eyes, already open and avid, got even wider. “I think that was an earthquake,” she said. A Google search revealed it to have been a 4.7 temblor out of nearby Pasadena, which prompted us to wonder: If something more severe were to occur, would we know what to do instead of just sitting there blankly?“What if it’s the small one before the big one?” she asked.

These days, only a natural disaster could force Plaza to pause. She has spent the past decade working at a nearly nonstop pace, determined to show there’s more to her than April Ludgate, the disaffected intern she played on six seasons of the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” Though Plaza’s point has by now been proved — in particular, the 2022 doubleheader of “The White Lotus” and “Emily the Criminal” amply demonstrated her range — that drive has not yet abated.

In fact, Plaza has stayed so prolific that her three newest projects have all come out within days of each other. The first was the charming time-travel comedy “My Old Ass” in September (due in late October on Apple TV+), followed by the Marvel series “Agatha All Along” (available on Apple TV+) in which she plays the romantic antagonist to Kathryn Hahn’s “WandaVision” witch. Then there was the long-awaited release of “Megalopolis,” from 85-year-old director Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather”), which features Plaza in a grabby role unlike anything she’s played before. The film is still in theaters.

You could call this an Aubrey Autumn if the 40-year-old actress weren’t so abashed about the synchronicity.

“It’s almost embarrassing,” she said. “People are like, ‘God, you work so much!’ I’m never going to not be hungry to find parts. It’s almost a survival thing for me where I need to act or I’ll just die.”

There’s humor to be found in the gulf between the grandness of Plaza’s statements and the flatness of her voice. Still, you shouldn’t mistake all she says for sarcasm. “I don’t take anything lightly,” she told me, a mandate she extends to her work. “Even if it’s a comedy, I treat it the same: I’m very intense about whatever I’m doing.”

The longer we brunched, the more I agreed. Maybe the popular perception of Plaza has been wrong all along: What so many people describe as her lack of affect may instead be a barely concealed fervor, a tremor beneath the surface threatening to become the Big One if she ever dares to let it emerge.

Hahn, who has known Plaza since guest-starring on “Parks and Recreation,” said the two bonded over their obsession for late actress Gena Rowlands. She described Plaza as “hungry” for all things Hollywood.

“She’s a student and an old-school, cigar-smoking film director who master-classes the occasional film theory class,” Hahn wrote in an email. “She loves old-school stardom. I remember her saying, ‘It’s all for the memoir.’”

With a name as outsized as Wow Platinum, it’s clear that Plaza’s character in “Megalopolis” is not meant to be played like a shrinking violet: Indeed, Plaza strides into every one of her scenes as though it’s a bounty to be won. Her Wow is a power-hungry financial reporter who loves visionary architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) but tires of being merely his mistress. Determined to rule as one half of a power couple, she sets her ruthless sights on banking magnate Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), the only man rich enough to finance her ex’s ambitious architectural innovations.

Though “Megalopolis” has earned wildly mixed reviews, most critics agree that Plaza gives its most successful performance, either because she has the clearest understanding of the movie she’s in or because she’s able to bend its tone toward her through sheer bravado. (Or both.) Nevertheless, she was surprised to be offered the role of Wow in the first place.

“Even the physical description of her, I don’t think I’m the person you would think of right away,” she said. But Plaza was willing to do whatever was needed for the movie, even bleaching her hair platinum blond for the first time. She felt inspired by the likes of Faye Dunaway in “Network” and Nicole Kidman in “To Die For,” brash and fearless women who seek power in male-dominated worlds.

In the works for decades, “Megalopolis” finally began shooting in November 2022 after Coppola sold a share of his wine empire and self-financed the film to the tune of $120 million. By all accounts, it was no ordinary production. A report in The Guardian called the shoot a “train wreck” and quoted anonymous sources who said that while filming a nightclub scene, Coppola tried to kiss some of the female extras. (He told the Times he was “not touchy-feely” and “too shy” to have done so; he later told Rolling Stone he had kissed some on the cheek, though they were “young women I knew.”)

Asked about the allegation, Plaza demurred. “I wasn’t on set that day, so I don’t really know what went down there,” she said. But she admitted that the production was “not for the faint of heart,” with Coppola prizing spontaneity and directing a cast full of strong personalities who were all used to leading their own movies.

“It was madness working on that film,” Plaza said. “My mentality every day was ‘every man for himself; only the strong survive here.’”

Any given scene felt up for grabs since Coppola was as liable to tell Plaza, “In the next take, you’re a spider,” as he was to pursue an idea contributed by his barista. “There were days that I would go to set thinking we’re about to start shooting,” she said, “and instead, Francis would go, ‘I’d like to play a game.’ ” Recalling that, she imitated a record scratch.

Though Plaza felt inspired by Coppola’s unconventional approach, she also knew that if she couldn’t stake her claim on this constantly shifting material, she was in danger of being blown off the screen. Between takes, she stayed in character, hoping to channel Wow’s strength as a survival mechanism.

“Even in the car on the way to that set, I would transform into Wow,” she said. “I would go, ‘OK, I’m terrified right now, I’m having a nervous breakdown as myself, but Wow’s not. She can handle anything.’ And I would switch like a lightbulb: ‘It’s Wow time.’”

Plaza said the actors who were willing to improvise ultimately proved most adept at navigating the production. “If you weren’t, then you’d get eaten alive,” she said. “You had to be confident and have a plan because it’s not all on the page.”

In the end, “Megalopolis” offered an experience as intense as anything she could ever muster, Plaza said: “It’s taken a long time, but I finally found what I’ve been looking for, which is having Francis direct me in a way that was truly inspiring and not about end result.” When you’re working with Coppola, anything and everything is on the table.

“On the desk, in fact,” she added.

At the end of June, Plaza, who is married to writer-director Jeff Baena, celebrated turning 40 with a birthday party that paid tribute to her longtime idol, Judy Garland. A drag queen performed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Dinner menus were modeled on the flyer for Garland’s Carnegie Hall show, only with Plaza’s face in her place. And as a final surprise, members of the Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus came out of Plaza’s closet — “no pun intended,” she said — to serenade her with a round of songs including “Happy Birthday.”

The idea of turning 40 is something Plaza recently explored in “My Old Ass,” in which she plays Elliott, a woman just shy of that pivotal age who pierces the veil of time and manages to connect with her teenage self. Assuming Plaza were able to do that, too, would she have achieved all the things by 40 that her younger self expected?

“Professionally, maybe, but I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing’s ever good enough for me. I’m so hard on myself.”

She has kept as busy as ever, having recently segued from an intense stint in “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” off-Broadway all the way to Bulgaria, where she shot an R-rated Ryan Reynolds comedy called “Animal Friends,” and then to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she starred in Ethan Coen’s forthcoming crime drama “Honey Don’t.” But there are still two things she has always dreamed of doing. One is that directorial debut, but the other is even more tantalizing: She really, really wants to host the Oscars.

Though many stars decline the high-risk gig, Plaza is openly pursuing it. After a pair of witty hosting stints at the Independent Spirit Awards, Plaza feels ready to emcee Hollywood’s biggest night. At a recent dinner party with John Waters, she met some higher-ups at the academy and pitched herself for the position, arguing that the host needs to be someone who cares deeply about movies.

“It drives me crazy when you see a bad Oscars show because this is the big event, this is all the most brilliant people that make films for the whole world, so can we not have them put on the best show?” she said. “I’m putting it out there, I’m manifesting it, because I bleed for movies. I care.”

It’s at that point that we were interrupted by the earthquake, possibly the only thing brunch could offer that would match Plaza’s intensity. In the quake’s aftermath, she briefly lost her nerve. “Screw the Oscars, I’m trying to survive,” she joked, using much more colorful language. “Check please!”

New York Times staff writer Caroline Tompkins contributed to this report.