LOS ANGELES — On a bright June afternoon in the San Fernando Valley, the summer's unlikeliest action hero sits down at a small dining table in the tidy ground-floor apartment that she shares with two cats. Offering her guest a plate of cookies, June Squibb explains that she previously lived for two decades in a different apartment on the second floor, but three years ago her son Harry insisted she move down to this unit so she wouldn't have to navigate stairs every day. "He was right — moving down here was the best thing I could have done," she says.

This may not seem like the typical setting for an interview with an action star. But then again, Squibb is 94 years old and nothing about her career has been typical. After decades on the stage in New York, she made the leap to film and TV when she was already in her 60s and quickly found herself working for directors like Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Alexander Payne. When she was 84, Squibb earned a supporting actress Oscar nod for her turn in Payne's 2013 film "Nebraska," and now, at an age when many actors have long since retired or died, she is finally stepping into the spotlight with her first starring role.

In the comedy "Thelma" (in theaters Friday), Squibb plays a strong-willed grandmother who is duped out of $10,000 by a phone scammer and embarks on a quest to get back what is hers, taking to the streets on a scooter hijacked from an elderly friend, played by "Shaft" star Richard Roundtree. (The actor died of pancreatic cancer shortly after making the movie.) Written and directed by Josh Margolin, who based the story on his own now-104-year-old grandmother, the film earned raves at this year's Sundance Film Festival for its fresh twist on familiar action tropes and its sensitive handling of both the indignities and pleasures of later life.

Building off that buzz, Magnolia Pictures is releasing "Thelma" on more than a thousand screens, the widest opening in the indie distributor's 23-year history. The film hits theaters just a week after Pixar's "Inside Out 2," in which Squibb delivers a standout turn as the new emotion Nostalgia — "a funny little lady with rose-colored glasses," in her words — making this truly the Summer of Squibb. For the Illinois-born actor, after a lifetime of playing supporting roles, it's a new experience simply to be the face on the poster and No. 1 on the call sheet.

"They keep saying that: 'You were No. 1!'" Squibb says. "It's so funny to hear that because, my God, all these years I just have never dealt with anything like that."

When she first read Margolin's script, Squibb connected immediately with Thelma's determination to confront those who wronged her. Her second husband, acting teacher Charles Kakatsakis, who died in 1999 after 40 years of marriage, always told her she could have made a good cop. "I think he's right," says Squibb, who loves police procedural shows and has several bookshelves filled with Scandinavian crime novels. "I have a great sense of justice, of what's right and wrong. Since I was a kid, that's always been a part of my ethos."

When looking for an actor in their mid 90s to play a role like Thelma, there aren't a huge number of contenders. But for Margolin, there was only one choice. "June is such a perfect mixture of strong but vulnerable, funny but understated," says Margolin, who connected with Squibb through mutual friend Beanie Feldstein. "She has that spirit where she just doesn't quit, and that's such an essential piece of that character and of my real grandma. I was just dead-set on it being her."

"Thelma" playfully sprinkles "Mission: Impossible"-style action set pieces into the story, appropriately scaled to a nonagenarian's abilities. Like Tom Cruise, Squibb gamely performed many of her own stunts, including driving a scooter at inadvisable speeds and rolling across a bed with a gun in her hand — no small feat when you've had two knee replacements. "I loved the scooters," Squibb says with a smile. "I have to admit, I did not do the wheelie. But I really did most of my stunts."

In some ways, the physicality of the performance was nothing new to Squibb, who honed her talents as a dancer and singer from an early age. Born and raised in Vandalia, Ill., Squibb — whose father sold insurance and whose mother was a secretary — could not have been much further removed from Hollywood growing up.

"I had an aunt who tap-danced and whistled through her teeth — that's the closest I came," she says. "But I just knew what I was: I was an actress. It never occurred to me that there would be any other way."

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