Carrie-Anne Moss revisits her most memorable roles, from The Matrix to Marvel's Jessica Jones

The actress, 50, brings EW down the rabbit hole that led her to season 2 of Marvel's Jessica Jones (streaming now on Netflix).

When asked to revisit her guest appearance on the lifeguard drama as twins who — 24-year-old spoiler alert! — turn out to be split personalities of the same woman, Moss just starts laughing. "Oh God, I think it was one [character] too many!" she chuckles before adding: "No, I'm just kidding. I remember really, genuinely going for it, and it was totally fun. Working on the beach in California? I mean..."

As a fan of Aaron Spelling's hit soaps, Moss had high hopes for this Melrose Place spin-off in which she played a veteran model, but the series lasted only one season — a setback she believes helped her afterward. "I learned from that show that the quicker you don't have any expectations in Hollywood, the better," Moss says. "In this business, there can be a lot of hype, and hype means nothing."

The Wachowskis' bullet-timed sci-fi franchise catapulted Moss — who starred as hacker Trinity — into the limelight nearly two decades ago, but the actress says the film's themes of resisting oppression and fighting for truth have never been more relevant. "I've realized how much of what the directors created is actually our reality right now," she says. "I'm still quoting The Matrix myself." And that's not a glitch.

Moss had just gotten married and admits she was homesick during filming for this romantic comedy, but says director Lasse Hallström — and the small French village in which they shot — helped make the experience worthwhile. "I was very taken by his kindness," she says of Hallström. "I am a sucker for kind people, and every day I watched him radiate it. I remember that distinctly."

Moss had just wrapped The Matrix when she came across the script for Christopher Nolan's cerebral second feature and felt immediately drawn to Natalie, a cipher of a character who toys with Guy Pearce's short-term amnesiac Leonard. "When I got to the scene where you see Natalie messing with him, I was like, 'I have to play this,'" Moss says. "That was my favorite acting I've ever done."

Pregnant at the time, Moss nearly passed on this indie drama about a reclusive British man until she learned of Alan Rickman's involvement. "I just couldn't say no," she says, adding that working with the late actor was "heavenly." "He was a lovely person, and..." She pauses. "It's sad he's not here."

For this historical epic, Moss worked opposite Game of Thrones star Kit Harington — a fact that one of her children, a die-hard Jon Snow fan, just recently discovered and still can't get over. "At the time, I was just Mom, who was away working," she says, laughing. "But when I told them the other day that I've worked with Kit, suddenly I'm like, cool, you know?" Oh, we know.

Season 2 of the comic-book series — in which she plays shrewd lawyer Jeri Hogarth — was entirely directed by women, a move that made Moss realize how few of them she'd worked with in her nearly three-decades-long career. "I can count how many on one hand," she admits. "I knew of the imbalance, intellectually, but that's when I became fully aware of it." In other words, she saw the real world.