By Shawn Adler in Los Angeles

One of the small pleasures of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is Sal Paradise’s minor quest to find the all-time best, world’s greatest laugh. If you, like Sal, were in the business of collecting laughs, you could do a lot worse than Linda Cardellini. Actually, you couldn’t do much better. Linda, known to movie audiences as Velma in the two "Scooby-Doo" films, has an explosive and infectious giggle that still makes me, a few weeks after talking with her, smile with delight. As if that weren’t enough, Linda is absolutely gorgeous.

All of this is to say, of course, that I should try hard to stop falling in love with the actresses I interview.

Linda recently sat down with Cinema Confidential in Los Angeles to discuss "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed."

Q: So did you like vamping up this time?

LINDA: I did. It was fun. I think the great part about it is that she [Velma] vamps up and that’s not how she should be. Which I think is great because it’s sort of the opposite of what you learn in other things, that once the girl starts to look pretty her life goes well. I think it’s funny that everything falls apart for Velma when she pretends to be someone she’s not or get over-glamorized.

Q: Was that outfit as uncomfortable as it looks?

LINDA: No, it actually wasn’t that bad. The only bad thing about it is that it doesn’t breath. It’s not real leather.

Q: Is it hard doing the Velma voice?

LINDA: No, it’s actually scarily easy. It’s harder not to fall into it at times.

Q: Was there much improving on set?

LINDA: There was. The great thing is that Raja [director Raja Gosnell] knows us all. He knows how we work. He’ll just let the camera go and keep going, before or after a scene. You have a lot freedom that way.

Q: Was it easier now that you know how to work with the CGI stuff?

LINDA: Yeah, you know, it’s still very technical and at times - it’s frustrating because you’re talking to thin air. The great part about it is that on the second movie we know what the dog’s going to look like, we know what the star of the movie is going to be like. The first time through we had no idea. He is the star of the film and you have no idea how the voice and the animation are going to come together. So it was great to know that it would work with us in the scene with him and that kids would really respond to it.

Q: Has being on ER perceptively changed your profile?

LINDA: I don’t know. The one thing that being on ER has changed is that I’m more recognizable because it’s the first time where I played someone where I look like her on the street. I could stand next to the poster for Scooby-Doo and nobody would know that it’s me.

Q: You mean you don’t go out in the wig and the glasses?

LINDA: No, no. I should. I have one whole costume from the first movie.

Q: Do you think Velma’s lesbian fan base is going to be disappointed by what happens in Scooby 2?

LINDA: I’m hoping they still hold out hope. You never know.

Q: Were you aware that there is a lesbian fan base?

LINDA: Oh yeah. In the first film we actually toyed with that a bit but they wound up on the cutting room floor this time.

Q: You’re doing the Jiminy Glick movie?

LINDA: Yeah.

Q: When did you shoot that?

LINDA: I shot that right before we started Scooby-Doo 2. I play the tortured daughter of a fading movie star. Her career has taken a dive due to her bad habits. He [Martin Short] is so much fun. We had such a great time, and it was such an interesting experience because the whole film is improvised. An improv film is such a different story then doing say, ER, for instance. It’s wild and unpredictable.

Q: How did that work?

LINDA: You sort of have a skeleton of how they want the film to go. It’s almost like an outline. The rest of the details and the rest of the turns are up to you. You know certain plot points and that’s it.

Q: What was it like re-uniting for your cast mates for Scooby?

LINDA: It was really good for me because the first time through Matt, Sarah, and Freddie all knew each other. The second time through I also knew them and it was easy. It wasn’t hard to get back into at all. We just enjoyed each other. There was just a lot of work that we didn’t have to do after doing the first one.

Q: Would you consider doing a third one?

LINDA: Yeah, if it’s a great story definitely. Kids love it. I hear some 3 or 4 year old kids who can’t speak in complete sentences and they love to talk about Scooby-Doo. It’s fun. It’s really a great character. There’s not a lot of broad, young and smart, crazy, zany characters that you get to play like this.

Q: Do you like the fact that she’s a role model to girls?

LINDA: That’s a hard question in some ways because “role model” just has so much weight to it. But if anybody is going to be one I like that this girl is a smart girl who cares more about her brains and her friends than she does about her image. She has the Einstein way of thinking. She wears the same thing everyday and she doesn’t have to think about it. That way she can go about her scientific experiments or whatever.

"Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed" opens in theaters March 26th.