Demi Moore Draws on Life Experience to Play Hot Tempered Wife in 'Another Happy Day'

Demi  Moore
has endured her fair share of personal heartache, including a divorce from Bruce Willis in 2000 and the ever-escalating media circus surrounding her and husband Ashton Kutcher's alleged infidelities.

In front of the camera, the veteran screen siren knows exactly how to channel such extreme angst and dysfunction. She brings to life the role of hot-tempered Patty, the second wife of Paul (Thomas Haden Church) who’s fraught relationship with ex Lynn (Ellen Barkin) and their children is the center of the upcoming drama “Another Happy Day.”

Indeed it was the idea that one's loved ones can cause so much suffering that struck a chord with Moore.

“That was the most interesting thing, the unintended pain and hurt that can be caused within a family… and then the need to be heard,” she told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “We as human beings have a tendency that, when we are hurt, we want to blame. But when we blame we give our power away. It is so well illustrated (in the film) without being commented or judged. Everyone wants permission to have their pain, and they feel like their pain has been denied.”

Moore also stressed that nothing in life and in love is exactly as it seems.

“We might feel comfortable being in the black or the white, the yes or no, but the truth is we all live in the gray,” she continued. “We’ve all been the victim, and we’ve all been victimized.”

And take note any young Kutcher groupies/mistresses/wannabes/whatevers, Moore is not a lady one would want to mess with. The “G.I Joe” star relished the opportunity to go at it with a full-on fight with Barkin in the flick, wrapping her legs around her and going in for the strangle.

“It was hilarious. It was just so much fun. It’s not often that you have the chance to take that kind of emotion and sparked rage and vent it out,” Moore said. “And I have to say, you don’t want to hurt anyone, but you want it to be real and we kept laughing after each take.”

However, someone did get hurt.

“We didn’t get hurt but guess who did? Thomas Haden Church. Ask me if he appears in that fight scene? Only briefly to contain his wife, but he is not involved in any altercation of any sort, but he managed to have some bruised ribs,” Barkin revealed. “But I felt very safe. I knew Demi knew how not to hurt me and I knew how not to get hurt. We did have a stunt people if needed… but we just looked at each other, and looked at Sam (Levinson, the director) and said, ‘We can do this.’”