IN “The Mighty Macs,” Carla Gugino plays Cathy Rush, the Hall of Fame basketball coach who in 1972 led tiny Immaculata College to the national women’s basketball championship, the first of three titles.

When you’re playing a real person, do you like to get close to your subject?
I haven’t done a lot of that before, so I don’t know if you feel differently in different situations, but in this case, because Cathy was available, it was easy to make her part of the process. It was really wonderful to sit and talk with her. I think you go awry if you try to imitate somebody. What I was looking for was something deeper, and I think I did get a sense of her tenacious spirit, and also her warmth. I think her unusual combination of those two things are what made her an effective leader. I hope that comes through in my performance.

“Mighty Macs” is a classic underdog sports movie, but it’s also a movie about the times, about Cathy Rush being among the vanguard of women who balanced work, marriage, family. How did that speak to you as a woman?
That actually surprised me a lot. When I first sat down with [writer-director] Tim Chambers, one of the first things I asked was, “Was it really that hard for a woman to get a job in 1972?” In my mind this period was long after women’s lib. And Tim’s point was you have to understand the particular culture of this time and place, and it was very conservative. Not that different than the 1950s. I grew up in Northern California, Big Sur, and was exposed to an entirely different kind of world.

So was this a new type of character for you?
At the time they were casting this movie, they were looking for someone who could play a strong woman, and I was known for that at the time. The character I played in “Entourage,” and some other work I was doing on television. But to me there is something unique about this role. The thing about Cathy is that she was smart. She could be tough, but she knew there were times when she needed to be soft to buck the system. And she was also confident in her mission. Her drive came from a sense of purpose that was rooted in a sense of fairness. You can call it equality, but my sense is that Cathy wanted things to be fair.

“Mighty Macs” wrapped more than a year ago, and has been looking for the right distribution opportunity. Now, with so many female-driven movies [“Bridesmaids,” “The Help”] dominating the box office, it seems to have found the right window.
What I’m happy about with “Bridesmaids” is that it’s not the traditional old-school chick flick, which is something I’ve never been interested in. There’s such an element of condescension in them, and at the same time, they never seem to be representative of the women I know. So for sure, I’m excited to be a part of this, because these women are so real.

And if you look back to Hollywood’s golden age, with Bette Davis, or Ava Gardner and Joan Crawford, the list goes on, these women were bringing everyone to the box office, they were seeing their work respected by men and women.