Judy Greer relished terrorizing Emma Thompson in 'Dead of Winter'

Ant-Man, 13 Going on 30 and Arrested Development actress Judy Greer says she loved going from her sweet role in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to the dsitraught woman she plays in Dead of Winter.

"I left that movie to go and shoot this movie," Greer, 50, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

"I was shooting The Best Christmas Pageant Ever in Winnipeg and in Winnipeg, about an hour and a half outside of the city, is a fishing village," she recalled. "So, on one of my days off, I drove out there and kind of wandered around and checked out the ice fishermen and looked at the frozen lake and it was definitely more helpful than if I had just been in Los Angeles."

Filmed in Finland and Germany and out on DVD Tuesday, the thriller casts Emma Thompson as Barb, a grieving Minnesota widow who stumbles across a remote, snow-covered cabin where a couple, played by Greer and Marc Menchaca, are holding captive a terrified young woman named Leah, played by Laurel Marsden.

"The desperation of all the characters was really, I think, what stood out to me the most," Greer said, referring to how her unnamed character keeps trying to kill Barb to prevent her from rescuing Leah.

"After getting the email that they were sending me a script that Emma Thompson was attached to, I was like, 'In what world am I saying "no" to this?' But when I read the movie, everyone felt so desperate and struggling to hold on to something that they had and cared so much about. I've never played anything like this before, so it was also a huge, exciting challenge."

There is very little spoken dialogue in the film, so viewers must closely study the stars' facial expressions and body language to understand the couple's motives and why Barb feels compelled to venture alone into such a dangerous situation.

"It definitely made me ask a lot of questions of our writers and director. I was constantly like: 'But wait, why? Why is she doing this? Why is she so angry? Why is she so scared?' All of these questions, because it was so succinct," Greer said.

"That was also what I liked about it. I felt like the writers really respect the audience," she added. "I don't always find that in a movie or TV show. They're like, 'They'll get it.'"

Sharing the screen with double Oscar-winner Thompson lived up to all of Greer's professional hopes and expectations.

"I knew the acting part would be something I would remember for the rest of my life," Greer said.

"The thing I didn't know what to expect was what she was really like. I walked into the hotel with my suitcases and she was right there, and she was like, 'Come on, mate, we're going to go have dinner.' She's just incredible."

Greer admitted the physicality of doing her first fight scenes -- ever -- in the freezing cold was challenging.

"It was really hard for me," she said. "Add into it, the weather and the location, how remote we were. The movie takes place in a very remote place, but we were very remote. I will say that all the hard, physical work that we had to do was nothing compared to what the crew was doing all day every day -- lugging on sleds all of our equipment."

Some days, the snow was waist high, while other days the sun was out and the white stuff melted, creating various other problems for the cast and crew.

"It added a lot of tension, definitely," Greer laughed. "So, that made my job a bit easier."