It's been awhile since Judy Greer was back in her hometown of Livonia, and she needs some answers.

"Is Bates' Burgers still there?" the actress asks almost immediately at the top of a Zoom call, and she breathes a sigh of relief when she's informed that the tiny hamburger stand at Five Mile and Farmington Road, near where she grew up, is indeed still there. Crisis averted.

Greer is on the line to talk about her new movie, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," a warm family Christmas movie opening in theaters Friday. It's her first major holiday movie, she thinks. "I don't think that I've been in a big, family-style Christmas movie," says Greer. "Sometimes I have to look at my own IMDB page to remind me."

That's what happens when you've racked up more than 170 credits over the last 25 years.

Greer first broke into Hollywood and carved a reputation for herself with a series of best friend, sidekick or rival girl roles in movies like "The Wedding Planner," "13 Going on 30," "Elizabethtown" and "27 Dresses." (She spoofed her typecasting in a Funny or Die video, "Judy Greer Is The Best Friend.")

She's since transitioned to playing supporting roles in blockbusters, including "Jurassic World" and the "Ant-Man" and "Halloween" movies, and she contributed motion capture performances to a pair of "Planet of the Apes" entries. She's also appeared in dozens of TV shows, including "Kidding," where she starred opposite Jim Carrey, and "Arrested Development," where she played Kitty Sanchez, the loyal assistant to Jeffrey Tambor's George Bluth Sr.

Greer's got one of those faces that you know but you can't quite put a finger on what it is you've seen her in, until you realize how many things you've seen her in. (She cheekily titled her 2014 memoir, "I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star.")

She's front and center in "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," playing a mother who is put in charge of organizing her small town's annual Christmas celebration. The film is based on the 1972 children's novel of the same name and has a charming out-of-time quality to it: the setting is vaguely period but the feeling is modern, without characters holding devices in their hands.

"I love that it's timeless," says Greer, speaking from the movie's junket last month. "I love that there's no technology in this movie. And I just think it's something that literally everyone can see. You can go to the theater with your blood family, your chosen family, and I hope it's something that people watch every year and it becomes a Christmas tradition."

Greer says the movie, which was directed by Dallas Jenkins, was built with annual viewings in mind.

"Sometimes I feel like it's silly to say, 'I think we're making a timeless Christmas classic,' but that's the goal," she says. "Obviously, we made a movie that looks a certain way and sounds a certain way and feels a certain way. And hopefully, what we want, is this to be a holiday movie that people want to watch every year during the holidays."

Greer, born Judith Evans — she borrowed her mother's maiden name for her acting career — had her own Christmas traditions growing up. After attending Christmas Eve Mass, she and her parents (Greer is an only child) would make a homemade pizza and watch "Plains, Trains and Automobiles," "even though it's a Thanksgiving movie," she says, "I don't know, we watched it on Christmas Eve."

Greer grew up in Livonia's Kimberly Oaks Estates subdivision, and her first job was working as a server at Olga's in the Laurel Park Place mall. She has fond memories of the Livonia Spree, Livonia's annual summertime celebration, and maybe not so fond memories of the Ropertis Turkey Farm on 5 Mile Road. "I no longer eat meat, and part of the reason is because of driving by that turkey farm all the time when I was younger," she says.

She took ballet classes as a child, and an early production of "The Nutcracker" was a gateway forward. "I really liked being on stage, and I knew I liked being in productions," says Greer, 49. "I was not the greatest ballet dancer, and so it was kind of a natural transition into acting."

At Churchill High School, Greer participated in the creative and performing arts program. She was doing plays and musicals, mostly appearing in the background, until she nabbed one of the main roles in a production of "The Pajama Game," which gave her lines, choreography and a solo on stage. It was a huge boost.

She continued pursuing acting and studied in the theater program at DePaul University. She started getting film roles after college — her second movie was the David Schwimmer rom-com "Kissing a Fool" — and before she even realized it, she was putting together a body of work.

"I swear it didn't click for me until like five years into my career, I'm living in Los Angeles and I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm actually an actor!'" she says. "At the time I figured, 'When this ends, I'll go and get a master's degree in something.' But it didn't really end."

Greer, who's married to TV producer Dean E. Johnsen and is stepmother to two children, hasn't been back home to Livonia in awhile. After she left for college, her parents moved to a small city south of Toledo. But she's well overdue for a trip home, and to Bates'.

In the meantime, she's trying to keep up appearances at the movies. She's a staunch advocate of the theatrical experience, and says its something we need to preserve, she says, lest it slip away.

"We have to support the things that we believe in, and I believe in movie theaters. I believe in turning my phone off and fully engaging with a piece of art for two hours. Hopefully it's not longer than two hours, let's be honest," says Greer. "But I love going to the theater, I love the popcorn, I love the seats, I love being in the dark, I love seeing a movie with strangers. For some reason it just feels like an experience that we have to be careful, if we don't take advantage of it, it will go away, and then we'll all complain that it's gone, and it will be our fault."

'The Best Christmas Pageant Ever'

Rated PG: for thematic material and brief underage smoking

Running time: 99 minutes

In theaters Friday

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