Florence Pugh said she almost hurt herself to play her character in the movie Midsommar.

In Midsommar, Pugh played Dani, an American psychology student who was sad and broke down after going to Sweden’s midsummer festival with her abusive boyfriend.

“When I played her, I was so into her, and I’ve never felt that way about any of my characters before,” Pugh said on a podcast called Off Menu.

“I’d never played someone in that much pain before, and I would put myself in really scary situations that maybe other actors don’t have to do, but I would just imagine the worst things,” she said.

The actress said, “Every day, the content would get stranger and harder to do.” I kept thinking about things that were getting worse and worse. I think that by the end, I probably, for sure, hurt myself to get that performance.”

In another interview with The New York Times, Pugh had nothing but good things to say about the movie’s director, Ari Aster. She said, “He’s weird in a mad genius kind of way” and “at heart, he’s a stand-up comedian.”

“If you laugh at something he says, he will try to make you laugh at everything else he says. He’ll keep talking, and everyone will start crying from laughing so hard,” she said.

“We were shooting in a very hot field with three different languages, so I wouldn’t say it was all fun,” Pugh said about making the movie.

“It shouldn’t be, either. Why would it be fun to make a movie like that?”

But Pugh’s performance in Midsommar was praised, and the movie made less than $50 million at theaters worldwide.