Actress Rooney Mara revealed that she decided to get real piercings for her role as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Find out why she’s keeping one of them.

Rooney Mara wants us to know that there’s one big difference between her and Lisbeth Salander, her character in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: She’s not a fan of excess holes in her body.

However, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t ready for the nudity and piercings that came with the role.

“I had parts of my head shaved,” Mara told Allure in her January cover interview. “I was in that character for over a year. If you’re going to do it, you have to do it. People always ask, ‘Were you crying when they cut your hair?’ And it didn’t freak me out at all. I was really happy to do it.”

Her hair wasn’t the only big change for the flick that co-stars Daniel Craig. The actress got her nipple, eyebrow, nose and ears pierced for the film.

“I didn’t even have pierced ears,” Mara said of her transformation, adding that it was the worst pain of any of her piercings. “They put four holes in each ear, and, weirdly, that hurt the most.”

The nipple piercing didn’t really hurt at all.

“It was actually not that painful,” she said, adding that it was necessary for the film, out Dec. 20.

“I thought, She has it in the book, and she should have it [in the movie]. Because of all the tattoos and the makeup and the piercings and the physical transformations my body has to go through, it would always feel sort of like I was in costume, even if I was naked. It just felt like a good one to get — a necessary one to get.”

The ear, nose and eyebrow piercings are gone now — but she kept the nipple piercing for possible sequels. “It’s not something I want to ever get repierced,” she said. “So I’m going to keep it in.”

Mara also revealed that the nudity in the film wasn’t that big of a deal to her, either.

“Nudity is such a huge part of the character in the book, so I never thought twice about it,” she said. “There was no time for hesitation. I didn’t have time to second-guess anything or be scared; I just showed up and was comfortable.”

Photo credit: Eyeprime/WENN