THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (Rooney Mara Speaks)

Rooney Mara

• THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

With a release planned for December 21st, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo herself, Rooney Mara spoke with EW about her work in the David Fincher film, including the book's infamous rape scene.

"It was incredibly intense," she says, "We did it all in a week — the week of Valentine's Day, oddly enough. We were working 16 hours a day, and it was really, really challenging, not just emotionally but physically. But it's such an important scene. We wanted to do everything we could to get that right."

Based on the first novel in Stieg Larsson's literary blockbuster "The Millennium Trilogy," the Columbia Pictures film also stars Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Yorick van Wageningen and Joely Richardson