Gabrielle Union’s new memoir, We’re Going to Need More Wine, hit book and e-shelves this week, with the actress opening up about love, marriage and life as a working actress in Hollywood.

The talented star also gets real about her battle with infertility and surviving sexual assault at the age of 19, revealing in a new interview that she attempted to kill her rapist.

In 1992, the actress was working at a Payless shoe store when she was forced into the stockroom and raped at gunpoint. During a sit-down with Nightline, Union, now 44, recalled the traumatic experience.

“What happened was graphic and violent and life-changing and altering,” she said. “The woman in that back room is dead and I’m the phoenix that rose from the ashes.”

She went on to say she was determined to survive the assault, and if that meant killing her attacker, then so be it.

“It was literally an out-of-body experience. That me and the me on the ground getting raped became one and I grabbed the gun and I did my best to try and kill him because I really felt I was about to die. So it was either going to be him or me, and it wasn’t going to be me, not on that day.”

Watch the star speak on the experience below.