Allison Williams, 23, may be on the brink of stardom, but she’s already deft at dodging controversy. Ask her to pick between LA and New York, and she finds too much good in both cities to choose.

Team Kate or Team Pippa? “That is impossible . . . I think it’s literally a tie,” she responds. Her favorite Judd Apatow movie? “I don’t think I could isolate one . . . I love them all. I really do.”

Certainly she has a celebrity crush? “Marlon Brando and Paul Newman.” Someone living? “No, I think those two will forever remain my celebrity crushes. Maybe because there’s no chance of meeting them and being at all disenchanted.”

Needless to say, Williams is more attuned to her image than your typical 20-something — you won’t see the actress Lohan-ing at LA clubs anytime soon.

It probably helps that her dad, NBC News anchor Brian Williams, has guided her, offering bits of showbiz wisdom along the way.

“I think I’ve always had that bird’s-eye view of myself. I think it’s an actor trait . . . Sometimes it’s best just to get lost out there, but other times you have to be aware of where the light’s hitting you,” explains Williams.

“So I’m always aware whether my clothes are falling off or not. I rarely go out to clubs or anything, but I can’t imagine anything would really slip by me. With that said, who knows? I think I’m as ready for [being in the public eye] as I can be.”

Williams will soon find out. She snagged a starring role on HBO’s new show “Girls,” mere months after graduating from Yale in 2010. (Cue the cries of a million struggling actors.)

While it’s easy to lump Williams in with the hundreds of other celebrity children feeding off their parents’ success, the New Canaan, Conn.-raised up-and-comer has meticulously plotted her acting career for as long as she’s been forbidden from pursuing it.

“I’ve known I wanted to be an actress since I was really very little,” says Williams, currently crashing at her parents’ Midtown East pad. “The deal my parents made with me [was that] they would be morally and emotionally supportive of my career as an actress if I promised I wouldn’t start professionally until I graduated from college.”

That’s not to say Williams, who’s on a first-name basis with Tina Fey, hasn’t had her fair share of perks and introductions — like the time her father came to the rescue at a college improv show. “We almost got in trouble because the fire marshal tried to shut us down, and [he] talked to the fireman in the back and said, ‘I was a firefighter once . . . I understand,’” recalls classmate Matthew George, who was in her Yale improv group. “He saved us.”

Williams declined to comment on his daughter.

But the younger Williams says her “Girls” coup was all her doing. The actress caught the attention of Judd Apatow after a YouTube video of her singing live to the “Mad Men” theme went viral in October. He invited her to audition for “Girls,” which he’s executive-producing.

“There was a great mix of brazen confidence and deep age-appropriate insecurity flickering on her face,” says Lena Dunham, the show’s writer, director, co-star and executive producer, of Williams’ audition.

The show, which filmed in New York and is set to air in early 2012, centers on three girls fresh out of college as they sort out their lives in Brooklyn. It’s a younger, more bare-bones, post-“Sex and the City” New York. Williams plays Marnie, a type-A gallery gal.

“Marnie has a great work ethic,” Williams says, “and is a really great friend, but has the compulsion to sort of organize everyone, and has trouble letting go.” She says she can relate.

After all, this is a woman whose fourth-grade to-do list included such gems as: “Do my homework (the best it can be),” “Have a little snack (not big though)” and “Shower (if needed).”

The closest thing Williams has to a vice is “coffee in the morning,” and she stopped drinking alcohol a year ago.

“It started off as a monthlong cleanse, and then I realized that my quality of life improved,” she says. “My dad does not drink. My mom will have a beer every two days. I didn’t grow up in a drinking family.”

You can imagine why some people are shocked when they learn that the enviably beautiful Williams is quite funny.

She and her family are “all comedy nerds” who bond over “SNL.” Williams did a deadpan Kate Middleton impression for a series of hilarious “Funny or Die” videos she starred in and wrote. She even interned for family friend Fey on the set of “Baby Mama,” where her duties “mainly entailed being forced to do karaoke with us in the trailer,” says Fey.

It fits, then, that Williams is dating College Humor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, who attended her April birthday party at the West Village’s Norwood Club. (The actress won’t comment on her romantic life.)

Despite her comeliness and connections, Williams swears she’s “still surprised when photographers know my name.”

But come January, that shouldn’t be a shock any longer.

Makeup: Tamara Palumbo for Piret & Tamara cosmetics
Hair: Luis Guillermo for ArtistsByTimothyPriano.com
Dress: Dolce & Gabbana
Shoes: Tory Burch

dschuster@nypost.com