Elisabeth Moss said she used real pain for her performance in 'Shirley' after injuring her neck

• Elizabeth Moss said she used the pain from a real-life neck injury to enhance her performance in "Shirley."
• The "Handmaid's Tale" actor said she was in extreme pain for most of the film's production.
• She said: "I was actually in extreme pain for most of that movie, which begs the question, perhaps I should just throw my neck out before starting any highly dramatic role."

Elisabeth Moss has revealed the key to one of her trademark physical performances - real pain.

In an interview with IndieWire, Moss said that the year before she shot "The Invisible Man," she suffered a painful neck injury.

"I was in the pool with my nieces," she said. "I was throwing them around and I hurt my neck. A year later, I'm doing a shot for 'Invisible Man,' and I'm running, and I whip my head around to the right to look back, and there it went. I hurt my neck again, and spent the next six weeks working with a physical therapist."

Moss then continued to explain that just after her injury, she went into production for her latest film "Shirley" where she used the pain from her injury to draw out a realistic performance.

She said: "It was about two weeks before I started, so I was actually in extreme pain for most of that movie, which begs the question, perhaps I should just throw my neck out before starting any highly dramatic role. For 'Shirley,' it weirdly helped because she is in pain a lot of the time, physical pain, which is why she's popping pills and drinking."

Moss has won acclaim from critics for her performance as author Shirley Jackson in the 2019 biopic, and later during the same interview, she explained that Shirley Jackson's son, Laurence, was also a fan of her performance as well as the film.

She said: "He came up to me at Sundance at this party, and tapped me on the shoulder, and said, 'Hey, Mom.' And I was like, 'Excuse me? I'm so sorry. I don't understand.' And he said, 'I'm Laurence, one of Shirley Jackson's children.' We developed a nice email exchange, and we would love to develop more of Shirley's work. He was incredibly generous about the fact that we cut him and his siblings out of the movie."

"Invisible Man" was a big box-office hit and last year Moss spoke to Insider's senior entertainment reporter Jason Guerrasio about the possibility of making a sequel.

She said: "I would be 100% into continuing to tell that story. I think she's a fantastic character. I think there's definitely something to do there with her. She's got the invisibility suit. But I think there's something to do there. ["Invisible Man" director] Leigh [Whannell] and I always have said that like any sequel you don't want to do it unless people want you to do it. So I think we're still figuring out if anyone would want that. And then, of course, figuring out what that story would be and doing it well. You don't want to do a sequel for sequel's sake."