Katie Holmes will soon be starring in The Giver with Meryl Streep, and while she’s passionate about the project, she says it was a tough role to take on due to the lack of emotion she had to portray.

Holmes plays the mother of a young boy who lives in a strict Utopian society where hardly anyone is allowed to experience real feeling. The film is based on the book by Lois Lowry.

“I was not familiar with the book so I read it along with the script and I thought it was a really powerful story. I read for it and it was a really challenging role to play because it’s this utopian society, an alternative reality – there’s no emotion and no pain. There’s a great deal of security and safety but to play that as an actor is interesting because we like to emote, so that was its own challenge,” she said.

Holmes has several projects lined up after facing a suddenly stalled career; the actress worked on Broadway and on her fashion line Holmes & Yang, but recently split from her collaborator Jeanne Yang. Now, she says, she’s very inspired and excited to get back into movies.

“I’m feeling very inspired. I’ve always loved acting, and I feel really good about it right now. It’s an interesting job to have because when you start at 18, you don’t have that much life experience. You might think you’re ready for something, but you’re actually not. You’re dealing with 40-year-olds and being in an adult world when you’ve come straight out of dealing with prom issues,” she told Detroit News.