Jennifer Lawrence was "really excited" to become a mother for a second time

She told the Telegraph newspaper: "I was really excited to have another baby. My toddler was getting to the age where he was like: 'You stink. Get away from me!' and I was thinking how nice it would be to have a little baby again.

"But after he was born I actually got really bad postpartum [depression], which came to me as a total surprise, because I felt like I knew what to expect from motherhood. I was really slammed, it really caught me off-guard."

She added: "My baby was six weeks old. I was a little tired, I had the 'Oh, wow, my entire life is different, every day is different' moments. I was having an identity crisis, for sure."

Jennifer went on to reveal she would have turned down her role in new movie Die, My Love - in which she plays a mother battling postpartum depression - if she'd seen the script when she was battling the same issues in real life.

She explained: "[If I had been] feeling the way I was, I would have closed the book after the second page. I wouldn't have been able to go there. Because you want to get away from those feelings, you don't want to dive into them."

Jennifer filmed the role before her second pregnancy and she explained the performance took on a new meaning after she experienced postpartum depression in real life.

She said: "[When I made the film] I could go to those places, because to me at the time, they were imaginary. Then it happened to me afterwards and I was like ... Ohhhh!'"

The Oscar-winner previously opened up about about her experiences after giving birth for the second time in a candid interview with PEOPLE.

She said: "I didn't really end up having really bad postpartum [anxiety] until my second [baby].

"I think that just added another layer [to my performance]. I mean, I don't think that you have to have kids to play a parent by any means, but having that information about, you know, what a tiny person needs, and is looking for. Just having that information was helpful."

Jennifer stars in Die My Love with Robert Pattinson, whose fiancee Suki Waterhouse gave birth to their daughter last year, and the pair bonded over their kids.

She said: "[We bonded] over our kids because - like any new parent knows - that's the only thing you want to do is just, like, look at pictures and show people pictures and videos of [your] kids, so that's what we did. And his baby was like brand new, and mine was too."