Kristen Stewart drew from first love experience for new film

Kristen Stewart knew her new movie Equals would be a tough shoot, because she drew from her own relationship experiences.

The Twilight actress and her co-star, Nicholas Hoult, play lovers in in a futuristic society, where emotions are outlawed, and the 26-year-old explains she pulled from her own experience of falling in love for the first time to help her with the role of Nia.

"I read the script and I was just like, 'This is going to suck and hurt to think about'," she tells news show Entertainment Tonight. "You just place yourself in that feeling that maybe you've had before - it's the most visceral, intense, overwhelming feeling - so when it's really great, it's epically great, and when it's really bad, it's epically bad."

"So we knew going into it, this was gonna be like, 'Oof, this is going to hurt'."

Despite her reservations about the emotional toll of the movie, Kristen was happy to sign onto the film because she saw many similarities between the role and that of her Twilight character Bella.

"I'm obviously really drawn to that idea (of giving everything up for love)," she adds. "That element of both stories is kind of what turns me on the most about them. It's that idea of being, like, seemingly weak or subject to something in terms of just your capacity. You're emotional, you are completely raw and you are willing to give it all up for someone, and so it seems that maybe, like, you're on the bottom or something - like you are somehow giving yourself away - but really you are finding yourself in doing that. It's bold to do that, it's f**king courageous to give yourself to someone like that."

Kristen dated Robert Pattinson after they met on the set of the highly-popular vampire film franchise in 2008. They split in 2013, months after the Hollywood actress' infamous fling with her Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders in the summer of 2012. Robert is now engaged to British singer FKA twigs, while Kristen was most recently linked to French musician and actress Soko.