Scared Felicity Huffman

Felicity Huffman was "frightened" playing her latest movie role.

The actress admitted she struggled to switch off after filming emotionally-draining scenes for 'Phoebe in Wonderland', in which she plays Hillary, mother to a troubled nine-year-old girl who retreats into her own imaginary world.

She said: "I'm not one of those people that says, 'Oh, I stayed in character,'. But when you live in a world, when you live in a certain set of circumstances and you have certain objectives that you live with for 10, 12, 14 hours, you tend to carry them home with you. And I found that with Hillary I was frightened. I was just more frightened than I usually am, and I'm pretty frightened all the time. Yeah, I carried a lot of fear around with me, whatever that means."

Unlike Felicity, her 10-year-old co-star Elle Fanning - who plays Hilary's daughter Phoebe - had no trouble with the more emotional scenes and the 'Desperate Housewives' actress admits she learned a lot from watching the child star.

Felicity added: "We'd be acting sort of intense scenes. I'd be in there going, 'Oh, I have to - it's dark and upset...' We'd do the scene and the director would yell cut and Elle would jump up and go, 'That was fun! Can we do it again?' It was such a lesson to me about the joy of acting that you forget about as you grow older. You have your self-doubt and all that stuff and Elle goes, 'Oh no, it's play. It's fun.' "