LOS ANGELES: Politics is just show business for ugly people, the joke goes, and “Veep” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus says her experience of both worlds has taught her that the similarities outweigh the differences.

The 55-year-old, a native New Yorker of French stock, has been one of America’s most popular and influential comedy actors since she found fame with cult sitcom “Seinfeld” in the 1990s.

But it is her role as hapless vice president and then President Selina Meyer in HBO’s “Veep,” recently renewed for a fifth season, which gives her a unique view over Capitol Hill from the Hollywood Hills.

“They’re very similar. You’re selling yourself, selling a brand, trying to stay vital as you try to sell yourself,” she said, adding that in Tinseltown, as in politics, you are only as good as your last project.

Louis-Dreyfus says her multiple Emmy Award-winning role since 2012 in Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci’s comedy has made her an ardent observer of “political behavior” and how it can be caricatured.

“Somebody standing in front of you making a speech and trying to sell you something — inevitably there’s a flip side to it and it’s funny,” she says with a wide grin.