Lea Thompson didn’t mind shooting during the frigid winter in Minnesota for her latest movie, Thin Ice, opening Friday. That’s her home state.

“I’ve been freezing in my life,’’ says the actress from her home in tepid Los Angeles. “I remember what it felt like, for sure.’’

Thompson, 50, plays the estranged wife of Mickey ( Greg Kinnear), a down-on-his-luck insurance salesman who’s always looking for his next big deal. Bad things happen to scammers, as everyone learned in Fargo.

Kinnear appears in almost every scene, spending a lot of the time either trudging or slipping in the snow, in what is supposed to be Wisconsin.

“He suffered,’’ affirms Thompson, who, after watching the movie in full, was thinking about taking a vacation in Miami. “It made me want to get someplace warm!’’

At least Lea got to have some fun. Some of her friends from high school even came to visit the set.

Thompson, who most fans remember from ’80s classics — Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in All the Right Moves, a rebel youth in Red Dawn, Michael J. Fox’s time-traveling mother in Back to the Future and a rocker chick in Howard the Duck, has fond memories of working on Thin Ice.

“Anytime you put a bunch of smart, funny people together it’s always a good time,’’ she says, adding, “Greg is a genius. The way he reacts to stuff, watching how his world kind of unravels around him and how he deals with it, with this level of anxiety. Awesome.’’

She had first met the Oscar winner in the ’90s when he was hosting Later.

“I was a famous actor, and he was a talk-show dude. Now what a wonderful actor he’s become,’’ she says. “He can take a part that has little redeeming quality, and you still care about him. That’s hard to do.’’

How Lea got the part is a story in itself.

“It wasn’t my agent; it was my cat,’’ she explains, laughing. “Stinky Pete wandered into my neighbors’ house, and they called telling me they had my cat.’’

The neighbors happened to be Wisconsin-raised sisters Jill Sprecher, the movie’s director, and Karen Sprecher, who wrote the comically dark screenplay.

“It was amazing that these two super-nice Midwestern ladies could come up with something like this. I wouldn’t have put it together.’’

Though many people might associate Thompson with bigger pictures, she’s not averse to smaller scale productions.

“I go where the interesting part or story is, but I have a very independent spirit,’’ she says. “I love to get down and dirty with the low budget.’’

Still, it’s hard for fans to get Lorraine McFly out of their heads.

“I’ve been around a long time and have done a lot of diverse things, and I’m honored to have survived, in any profession,’’ says Thompson, who can be currently seen as the mom on Switched at Birth. “People feel like they’ve grown up with me.’’

She and husband, director Howard Deutch (who met on 1987’s Some Kind of Wonderful) have two daughters already in showbiz. Madeline, 20, is a singer and Zoey, 17, currently costars in CW’s Ringer.

“They’re ambitious, but listen to me,’’ says Thompson. “They know I can help them get the job and do it well. Anything they’re going through I can definitely relate. I’ve been there.’’