It seems so wrong to think of Courteney Cox as a former star of the hit TV show “Friends,” particularly as long as Monica lives on in almost perpetual syndication. But it also isn’t quite right to think of Cox as a movie star, not after mostly second-banana roles in pictures like “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “3000 Miles to Graceland.”

That may have begun to change during the recent San Francisco International Film Festival, where Cox’s starring role in the moody psychological thriller “November” gave her a chance to carry a picture for the first time. Playing a photographer who is cheating on her boyfriend (played by James Le Gros) before he’s killed in a robbery, Cox gets to be the non-Monica.

Courteney Cox Arquette and her husband, David Arquette, attend the premiere of Layer

“November,” which opens commercially July 29, was shot in just 15 days for $150,000 — that’s the Power Bar budget for a season of “Friends” — during Cox’s hiatus before the show’s final season.

“It was not my dressing room on ‘Friends,’ or anything like it,” Cox says, laughing at how far the film took her from the lap of network luxury. “We shot at the producer’s house, and we got hair and makeup in the kitchen of the townhouse next door. There was nothing luxurious about it, but it was great because everyone was there for the love of this film.”

She didn’t have to audition to get the part — one of the advantages of being incredibly famous when low-budget independent features are being cast — but both she and director Greg Harrison (“Groove”) were gambling that she would be right for the part. “I guess he took a chance, insofar as who knew if I could do drama,” she says.

The film plays with narrative structure by telling the same story three times, with Cox’s character remembering events differently each time. They often shot out of sequence, making it even more difficult to keep track of which reality her character was supposed to be in. “There was a lot of gathering before we would shoot a scene to say, ‘OK, where are we? In guilt mode, or acceptance, or grief?’

“I’m so used to doing a sitcom in front of all these people, so it was nice to be able to play someone who had a lot of things going on inside,” she says. “It was more about my character’s journey and her life flashing before her eyes. Several times.”

Cox has experienced some of that since the end of her 10-year run of “Friends” last year. “I just feel like I’m a different person now,” she says. There are so many things I want to do, and am able to do now that I’m not working on the show. But don’t get me wrong. I miss it.”