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Marisa Tomei doesn’t want moviegoers to get the wrong idea. Sure, just more than a year ago she memorably opened Sidney Lumet’s dark tale of brotherly loathing, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, in coitus with on-screen husband Philip Seymour Hoffman and spent much of the film in various states of undress. And, yes, in her new film, The Wrestler, directed by Darren Aronofsky, her first scene has her giving Mickey Rourke a lap dance. But really, Tomei insists, she didn’t plan on any of this.

“It just happened and I was like, well, I guess it’s now or never—I really want to work with these directors,” she says of her back-to-back in-the-buff performances. “After I did the Lumet film, I wasn’t intending to do anything like that again, and certainly not sequentially. I was worried about how it was going to be received. Like, ‘Who does she think she is? Why is she doing this? What is happening to this person?’”

It would appear that what is happening to Tomei’s career, at least, is something of a new high. In addition to the Lumet drama, the past year has held a string of meaty projects including Will Eno’s Oh the Humanity and Other Good Things at New York’s Flea Theater, a Broadway revival of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and the political satire War, Inc.

In The Wrestler, Tomei, 43, gets to sink her teeth into yet another fulfilling role. The film, which is slated for a December release and is already generating Oscar buzz, stars Rourke as an aging professional wrestler. His character, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, was once the subject of late-Eighties stardom and is now resigned to grim live performances and a solitary Groundhog’s Day–esque existence in a New Jersey trailer park. Tomei plays Cassidy, a stripper who is also dealing with the implications of a profession that takes its physical toll. When Randy’s health suffers, the two find themselves drawn to each other.

Considering Cassidy’s livelihood, it’s not surprising that the actress’ early discussions with Aronofsky were very specific.

“We started really talking in earnest about, OK, what do you really mean when you say ‘striptease?’” says Tomei, who admits she was hesitant to say yes. “I definitely felt like, do I really want to go there and expose myself that way?”

But Aronofsky was persistent—so much so that he gave her an ultimatum.

“He said, ‘Text me tomorrow, and if you’re gonna do it, text me: Rock ‘n’ roll. If you’re not gonna do it, you might as well text me: Easy listening,’” she recalls.