Brittany Snow Felt 'Liberated' Playing an Adult Film Star in New Horror Movie X : 'She's in Control'

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Brittany Snow is taking a stab at unapologetic confidence.

The actress plays a 1979 adult film star in the new horror movie X, but don't expect the slasher genre's stereotypical blonde victim — her bombshell Bobby-Lynne Parker remains in charge in writer/director Ti West's film.

"She has confidence and she owns her body. She's in control of the narrative and her own sexuality," 36-year-old Snow tells PEOPLE of her character. "She's in control of her future, and she really feels like these are the ways she's going to get there. It was something different that I thought was interesting than just playing a girl who could be used as a plot device or gets killed off right away."

X finds a small bunch of aspiring porn stars and crew members renting a secluded farm house in Texas to work on a new project. What they don't know, however, is that the elderly couple who also live on the property have creepy proclivities — with gruesome outcomes.

Snow says she was excited to explore a woman who's wholly confident in herself since that's something she's worked on in her own life for years.

"It's taken me a long time to own my confidence in my body and who I am and have autonomy over my body," she explains, "and I thought it was important for me to play someone who exuded that as well."

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A24 Brittany Snow in X

"Everyone goes on a journey of sorts in their 20s. Then in your 30s, you just sort of become desensitized to what other people think or opinions or standards of beauty," the Pitch Perfect actress shares. "There's some freedom in just owning what I have, and it's taken me a long time to get here and I felt liberated. I wanted to play someone who was also liberated in themselves."

Snow jokes that playing Bobby-Lynne was "a therapy appointment" for her: "I don't lead with my confidence when I enter a room. I lead normally with politeness and I just try to be kind, and she really entered a room in a specific way. I wanted to encapsulate that a little bit more into my own life, because I think there's something to be said for knowing who you are when you walk into a room."

"I definitely took that with me," she says.

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The cast also includes Mia Goth, Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi), Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson and Owen Campbell.

"Of course there's hesitancy of when you get that sort of a script, it can be done a specific way," she admits of signing on to play an adult film star, "but I talked to Ti and the way he wanted to create the movie and specifically the women characters. I felt like I was in good hands, where they weren't being used as objects. They were actually the people that were more powerful, in a way, in terms of their sexuality."

Friends and family who've seen X are "proud" of Snow, she says, for "taking this leap" that "wasn't done in a gratuitous way."

"There was some hesitation when I tell people what the movie's about, but then seeing it, it's just so much fun. It's done with such care that I think it's a lot more nuanced than people just assuming it's about 1979 porn," she says. "It's just a wild, fun ride, which is what we as human beings sometimes need as a form of escapism. There's a lot going on in this world, and sometimes we just need to watch a crazy movie."

X is in theaters Friday.