“It was so beautiful, it was such a moving thing to be able to bring that to life,” Lopez tells EW of portraying wrestler Anthony Robles’ mom in “Unstoppable.”

Emotions run high for Unstoppable star Jennifer Lopez, both while she filmed the inspiring true story of wrestler Anthony Robles in the movie produced by her ex, Ben Affleck, and now as she reflects on portraying the sportsman’s mother, Judy, in a tear-filled interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Speaking to EW after the film’s world-premiere screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, Lopez and director William Goldenberg hail the Robles family’s story as, at its core, a moving tale of a mother’s unrelenting love for her son.

“Judy Robles is quite an amazing person. She had a child very young, at 16 years old, and they kind of grew up together,” Lopez, 55, tells EW of the film’s central relationship between Judy and Anthony (Jharrel Jerome), a college wrestler who overcame odds to win a national championship despite many telling him that having only one leg would prevent him from advancing in the sport.

Bobby Cannavale, Jharrel Jerome, Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle, and Matt Damon at TIFF premiere of ‘Unstoppable’.Monica Schipper/Getty

“I really got to talk to her about how she felt about being a mom, being a mom to a child that was handicapped, being a person who was really kind of lost and in bad relationships and had to kind of figure herself out while she was raising these five kids,” says Lopez, who shares 16-year-old twins, Emme and Max, with ex-husband Marc Anthony.

As portrayed by Lopez in the movie, Judy evolves from a loving (yet apprehensive) parent who eventually confronts an abusive partner (Bobby Cannavale), predatory mortgage loan officers, and naysayers who doubt her son’s ability to perform on the mat — all en route to Anthony’s real-life triumph as a wrestling star at Arizona State University.

“To see what her story is at the end of the movie, that she has a PhD, but her son inspired her to do that because she supported her son, it’s a beautiful kind of exchange of love and selflessness that they both had,” Lopez continues, before clutching her hand to her chest and tearing up as she recalls filming one of the movie’s final shots: a loving embrace between mother and son, which, in the real world, was captured on film at Anthony’s final wrestling match of his college career.

“Even on that last day…. I went to her and I said to [the director], ‘We have to get them hugging at the end, right?’ I want to come through the crowd and I want to run to him and hug him, because that famous picture I had in my trailer, of the two of them, which is at the end of the movie now,” she explains. “I [asked Judy], ‘What did you say to him and what did he say to you?’ She just said, ‘I told him, you did it! You did it!’ And he said, ‘We did it!’ To me that was their whole relationship, it was so beautiful, it was such a moving thing to be able to bring that to life.”

Earlier, Lopez attended the film’s TIFF premiere alongside both of the Robles, stars Jerome, Cannavale, and Don Cheadle, and producer Matt Damon, who helped bring the film to the big screen alongside Affleck, from whom Lopez recently separated after two years of marriage. Affleck was not in attendance.

Jharrel Jerome and Jennifer Lopez in ‘Unstoppable’.Amazon MGM Studios

Lopez and Judy got emotional after the premiere screening, with Judy crying as she took the stage alongside the actress to introduce her son to the crowd at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall venue.

The Selena star told the audience that she and Judy “were almost the same person in a weird way even though we were so different and had such different lives,” because “at the core and heart of who we were, first we were moms.”

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Unstoppable enters limited theatrical release in December, followed by a streaming premiere on Amazon Prime. See Lopez discuss Judy’s inspirational story in the video above.