An American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian Angelina Jolie’s most recent role helped her to channel her own emotions and experiences in order to deliver a more powerful result.

The actress revealed that her character Hannah, a smokejumper still reeling from the loss of three lives she failed to save from a fire in the upcoming thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead, is “a really broken person who cries a lot.”

“I’m attracted to people who have experienced something and are broken and afterward discover their way advance and defeat it,” said Jolie, 45. “As an artist, it’s extremely healing to play people like that. She’s been very healing for me since you simply get so broken and then you stand back up.”

“It’s about people who have a great impact on one another and change one another,” Jolie said. “Emotionally and practically, they go through the fire.”

Directed by Oscar-nominee Taylor Sheridan (Hell or High Water), Those Who Wish Me Dead sees Hannah go over an upset 12-year-old kid named Connor (Finn little) with nobody else to go to.