Halle Berry has taken some challenging roles over the years, but one film in particular was one of the toughest to crack, and she spoke about trying to get into the character’s head recently.

The film is Frankie & Alice and the actress talked a bit about Frankie in an interview recently.

“That was hard for me as a person and as an actor. It was hard for me to accept and understand that a woman could exist inside of a person of color that was filled with so much hatred and had the ability to express it the way she did,” she said of Frankie, a woman who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. The film was based on a true story and follows two of Frankie’s personalities–a 7-year old child and Alice, an openly racist woman from the South.

Berry said that the idea of portraying a woman who was so vitriolic was scary, but that’s not always a bad thing.

“(The part) intimidated me, that’s what I wanted to do it so much. Whenever I am scared to death of something, then I know I am on the right track,” she said.

Berry has a history of tackling roles that might be intimidating to another actress; in fact, one of the producers on her television project, Extant, praised her for the way she handled meetings while she was pregnant.

“We’re sitting at her house and I’m pitching all these terrible, horrible things that can happen. And I’m looking down at her stomach and thinking, ‘Can she handle it?’” Greg Walker said.

Handle it she did; the show–about an astronaut who comes home from a solo mission to discover she’s pregnant–has gotten rave reviews from critics in recent weeks.

“I’m the happiest in my life when I have been pregnant, truly. So to be pregnant again on a show right after giving birth didn’t scare me at all. I thought, ‘I’m going to ace that part of this, for sure!’” she said.