Anjelica Huston may have never worked with screen legend Humphrey Bogart, but in her new dark comedy Choke, she may have found the next best thing.

“Sam (Rockwell) has this unconventional beauty and it has everything to do with soul,” observes Huston during a recent interview in Los Angeles. “In that way, he’s very relaxed like Bogart; he has a rakish charm that seems to occupy its own time and it’s an easiness and an affability that I really find attractive.”

If any living person knows what Bogart was like, it’s Huston. After all, her father — John Huston — directed Bogey in six films including, The Maltese Falcon.  

Indeed, it’s partly that esteemed lineage that’s developed the actress herself into a respected thespian with a knack for meaty roles like the one she plays in Choke, a dark comedy based on the hit novel by author Chuck Palahniuk.

“I think Chuck writes a really interesting character,” says Huston. “They’re a little surreal, his characters. (My character) Ida, in particular, has several layers of surreal mysteries even unto herself.

 Played by Rockwell, Victor Mancini is a sex-addicted, colonial theme park interpreter who willfully chokes in restaurants to allure rich patrons to rescue him. Huston plays his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother who, despite being a neglectful idiosyncratic matriarch, still possesses her son’s devotion.

“I think so much of Chuck’s work is about love. It’s a demented kind of love.”

She is just the type of character that fits Anjelica Huston perfectly. It’s the  more quirky, eccentric matriarchs of The Darjeeling Limited and Choke — in theatres next Friday — where Huston’s star is shining brightly these days.