The Verge: Sarah Butler Takes on the Notorious I Spit on Your Grave

What kind of discussions did you have with Steven about where he was planning to take the script and this character -- particularly before committing to each other?

Steven was in my callback audition, and he worked with me a little bit, but he didn't discuss it with me that much. It was actually the producer, Lisa Hansen, who kind of sat me down and said, "OK, are you sure -- are you really sure -- this is actually something you can do? We know how intense this is, and we want to make sure you're comfortable with it because we need someone who can go out there and go for it. We can't have someone with any reservations whatsoever." I told her I was hesitant at first, but I was starting to get really excited about it and I thought it would be a great opportunity for me. She said, "Great, I love to hear that." And we scheduled one more follow-up meeting, and I remember on that second meeting, the feeling was even stronger. She said, "OK! I'm glad that you're getting so excited about this. I feel really confident in your ability to do this. So we're just going to jump in and do it."

And then once you got to the set, and you are doing it, what was it like when reality set in?

We kind of eased in. We shot pretty much chronologically, so most of the first four or five days of shooting were, "Oh, I'm going to the cabin. Oh, I'm sitting and writing on my computer. Oh, I'm jogging." Very easy stuff; it was almost like there was no acting involved. And then all of the sudden it was looming there -- the first day of something really meaty, when the guys come in and attack me. We were all kind of like, "All right, here we go. It's going to be intense, guys. I guess let's just do this." None of us knew what to expect, and it turned out really insane.

What came out of it was this sort of pack mentality among the guys. They really got together; there was this feeling of camaraderie in the group. They were just surrounding me and circling me. We didn't do very much blocking as far as that went. They just knew where to go and what to do. It wasn't hard to be terrified at what they were bringing upon me -- the violence they bringing at me. It was pretty crazy that first night. It was the first time I really felt like I was out of control. I was scared.

But I knew that was the right thing to feel. As an actor, it's always our natural instinct to guard ourselves from pain and fear. So when I started to feel those things, of course I wanted to escape, but then I thought, "No! This is the right feeling to have! Just keep going with it." And I did. I think we shot maybe two or three pages past what we'd intended to shoot in this one handheld take. It was just so powerful what was going on there. It was the first time Stephen yelled, "Cut," and I couldn't come out of it right away. I needed a few minutes. I was just sobbing. I was beside myself.

Psychologically, how much were you able to leave on the set in any given night? How much of Jennifer's headspace do you have to occupy to successfully pull this role off?

It was so crazy, because it was so intense being in Jennifer's headspace -- especially the subsequent rape sequences. But once I got done with that long day of being in that all day, the first thing I wanted to do was to shed it and put it away for the night. It would have been way too intense to carry that over. It would have exhausted me; it would have depleted my performance the next day if I had done that. I needed to drop it completely at the end of each day and come to it the next day with a new, fresh mind and energy. I think that's what the guys did, too. We would get together at the end of the day and have dinner at our hotel every night, trying to blow off all that tension of the day so we could prep ourselves for the next day.

But there's also the headspace of Jennifer the killer -- the perpetrator of revenge. Is that a different type of intensity to shake off?

I found that when I was in my revenge mode, later in shooting, I spent more time alone without the guys. I didn't hang out with them every night like I had previously. I didn't eat lunch with them every day. Instead I'd take my lunch to my trailer and just kind of sit there. I felt like Jennifer post-attack -- Jennifer the avenger -- was just so much more planned, so much more premeditated. She was out in the woods, in this shack, without anything. I had to find everything to survive: clothes, food, everything. I had to steal things to survive. I had to eat things found in the woods. I had to get into that mindset of solitude and stay there for at least the whole day. At night I'd try to relax a little bit. But once I got up in the morning, I was very focused.

So what's next?

I'm just looking for the next project that I guess would be the perfect counterpart to this one. It's such a unique project; it's such a strong genre film. So I'm taking my next step very carefully. I'm looking at a lot of projects that come my way. It's been kind of difficult; there hasn't been a lot out there that seems like the "right" next thing to do. So we're just waiting -- waiting to see when it is that might come through our door. Hopefully it'll be soon.

(Top photo: Noel Vasquez/FilmMagic)

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