After playing a prostitute in the Lifetime flick The Client List (premiering tonight), Jennifer Love Hewitt understands what drives some women to the sell their bodies.

Hewitt, 31, says her character in the movie — a mother and former small-town beauty queen — is left with no other choice.

“Her husband has been injured and out of work; her massage therapy job has been phased out; her kids need braces and their house is about to be foreclosed,” she said on Ryan Seacrest’s KIIS-FM radio show Monday. “So she answers an ad in the paper for a massage therapy position.”

Initially, her character likes the attention.

But “very quickly, her life sort of goes on a downward spiral, and I think she realizes that there was probably more of the attention she was getting than she needed,” said the actress.

After doing the movie, Hewitt said she realized that the reason some women become prostitutes is “two-fold.” Not only is it helping them survive tough economic times, “it’s sort of helping them in their personal lives as well,” she said.

Some women might not be getting the sexual attention they need at home and “are kind of going out and going, ‘Well, we have needs just like men do, and if men can go out and get their needs met, we will too.'” she said. “It’s kind of crazy.”

On Saturday, UsMagazine.com spoke to Hewitt at the AZURE Luxury pool in the Palazzo Resort Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

She called the role her “raciest part” yet.

What else is in the works for the actress?

“Nothing at the moment,” she told Us. “I’m working on some TV stuff, looking into some film stuff, everything like that. Not really sure where I’m going to land just yet.”

Anyone special?

“No, nobody special,” she told Us. “Just family. I’m single for the moment.”

From US Weekly