Michelle Monaghan’s ‘Trucker’ role was a real shift!

To prep for her thick-skinned, tough-talking role in “Trucker,” Michelle Monaghan did the logical thing. She learned to drive a truck.

“It’s like a double clutch,” she says. “You have to downshift basically every time you shift. It was very tricky. I can drive an 18-wheeler but not a five-speed. I parallel-parked it and learned how to drop and hook and all those things.”

The hours behind the wheel transformed Monaghan into Diane, the title trucker in the film, which premieres Thursday at the Tribeca Film Festival. Diane coasts along, a hardened, promiscuous loner whose only friend is a married drinking buddy (played by Nathan Fillion).

She’s foul, she’s temperamental and the fact that she happens to look like, well, a movie star, seems to only speed her tour of the motels off the interstate.

The role is a far cry from Monaghan’s other upcoming work, the romantic comedy “Made of Honor,” in which she stars opposite Patrick Dempsey, or her turn in last year’s remake of “The Heartbreak Kid,” with Ben Stiller.

But when writer-director James Mottern spotted her in “North Country,” the gritty, Oscar-nominated 2005 film starring Charlize Theron, he knew he’d found his trucker.

“It was just such a brutally honest portrayal of a woman,” says Monaghan of Mottern’s script. “I immediately attached myself to it and we all worked really hard from that point to get it made.”

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