Blake Lively Talks It Ends With Us And Gives The Best Advice To Young Actors [EXCLUSIVE]

Blake Lively has come a long way since starring in teen fare like the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" films and "Gossip Girl" — and in her new movie "It Ends With Us," the actor and producer takes on a brand new challenge in one of her darkest projects to date. Based on the bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover, "It Ends With Us" stars Lively as Lily Bloom, a woman with a troubling family history who moves to Boston and meets Ryle Kincaid, played by "Jane the Virgin" star Justin Baldoni (who pulled double duty and directed the film). Ryle and Lily strike up a relationship, but before long, a new side of Ryle emerges, much to Lily's shock and dismay.

Looper got the chance to speak to Lively during a press roundtable about her work on the film — and beyond her other effusive praise for everyone else involved with the project, Lively marveled at the actors who portray young Lily and her teenage paramour Atlas Corrigan, played respectively by Isabela Ferrer and Alex Neustaedter. (As an adult, Atlas is played by "1923" star Brandon Sklenar, who was also present for the interview.) Lively admitted that she didn't have a whole lot of contact with Ferrer and Neustaedter, but that she did get starstruck around them when they visited her house. "She's just so great in this movie," Lively said of Ferrer. "And Alex is so beautiful. I was so starstruck because I'd spent so much time watching him for all this entire post-production process, every single day, every hour of the day, watching him [...] And then he walked into my living room."

"We were doing a marketing piece, and I was genuinely starstruck," Blake Lively continued, telling the story of when Isabela Ferrer and Alex Neustaedter visited her house. "I heard his voice first and I was like, "Oh my God. It's young Atlas." And then I met him, and I had never met him in real life. It was a wild. And Lily, she has a real name, she's a real human, Isabela was standing there too, and they were talking to each other, and I was genuinely geeked out to see them standing there in my living room."

While Lively did say that she and Ferrer "had limited interaction on set," she and Brandon Sklenar did discuss the degrees of similarity between the younger actress and the veteran performer. "Isabela and I, we have the same mole," Lively said, laughing. "We both talk with our hands a lot." As for Sklenar, he thought the two were far more similar than Lively would admit. After Lively asked if he thought the two were alike in their mannerisms and looks alike, Sklenar said, "Now that I know you, yeah, a little bit," saying it was "weird" that the two are so eerily similar.

I asked Blake Lively what advice she would give to young actors like Isabela Ferrer — who makes her feature film debut in "It Ends With Us" — the actress had a perfect answer: watch as many movies as you can. "Watch movies like it's your job," Lively said, before revealing that she actually received this advice from someone in her own life. "Someone said that to me once. They were asking me about a movie, and I was like, 'I don't know, I've never seen that movie.' They were like, 'It's your job though.' And I was like, 'No, I'm an actor.' And they're like, 'It is your job to watch movies.'"

"And I'm somebody who's always watched tons of movies, but I never looked at it like anything but a joy and entertainment," Lively said, explaining that she now understands watching movies is a major part of her job. "But watch movies from every time period, from every genre, from every type of storytelling, from every territory. You learn by watching movies. When people tell stories you learn how to tell stories. And being a good actor... The best actors I know are great filmmakers. And so learn about every facet of production. Learn why people tell stories that they do, because an actor's just a storyteller." Lively and Brandon Sklenar also highlighted the need to seek out all sorts of movies, from foreign films to animated fare. "If you pay attention and you watch the storytelling, you can take something and learn something from it," Lively concluded.

"It Ends With Us" releases in theaters on Friday, August 9.