Angelina Jolie’s new movie Without Blood depicts the horror that follows a war, and the movie’s star Salma Hayek Pinault was initially reluctant about starring in the movie.

“I was afraid to play this part. I was not immediately jumping in it because she suffers so much, my character, and I had to go there and suffer for the entire time of the shooting,” Salma told Variety at the Toronto Film Festival.

The Frida star continued: “You cannot expel the pain. You have to keep it boiling, boiling, boiling for hours, for days, for weeks. So I was terrified and I didn’t want to do it.”

She added: “The more we talked about it … I started seeing myself, my own traumas, the traumas of people that I know, that are close to me, in this character that was so foreign at the beginning and where I didn’t want to go. I started realizing, ‘What do you mean you don’t want to go? You’ve always been there.’ I started seeing how it connected to so many women even if you’re not post-war. We’ve all been tossed aside and not seen or abused in one way or another.”

Reflecting on the movie’s theme, Angelina said: “It was something that everybody, and especially these two extraordinary actors, had to come to the set very, very human,” Jolie added. “We all had to talk about what it was. After thinking about that pain, and thinking about that desire for revenge, and thinking about all of that hurt, and listening to the other side. Can you then let it wash over you? Can you really have heard [what the other side is saying], and can you let it transform you?”