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Jessica Chastain was deeply affected by the "very dark atmosphere" Zero Dark Thirty was filmed in.
The movie directed by Kathryn Bigelow follows the capture of Osama bin Laden and Jessica plays CIA officer Maya who assists in the hunt for the al-Qaeda terrorist.
Jessica, who received a Golden Globe this month for her work in Zero Dark Thirty, found many parts of the shoot harrowing.
She respects how her character Maya performed her job in such a terrifying place.
"I had a hard time doing the torture scenes. All those scenes were filmed in a Jordanian prison and there was a very dark atmosphere, especially with regard to the way women are treated," she told UK newspaper The Independent's Radar Magazine.
"They don't see women that often. I was like, 'I'm not getting out of this car, how dare these guys', but then you think: this woman had to live in Islamabad and all these places when she was doing this job - and had to experience the same treatment of women where she had no control."
Jessica was emotionally distraught when she would leave the set after a day of filming.
The star was comforted by a slew of cute puppies.
"I got pretty depressed while we were shooting all that, and Kathryn did, too - so we would send each other videos of dogs getting rescued!" Jessica recalled.
"I would come home to my hotel room, where I had taped up on my walls all the pictures of the terrorists in the movie, and I'd sit there all by myself. I'm on the other side of the world and I would go to my computer, crying about my day, and then I would see a video of this sweet dog being found in a garbage can and being brought to a happy home."
Zero Dark Thirty is currently in US theatres.
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