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Christina Hendricks is one of the most successful working women in Hollywood today, and it turns out the actress has every reason to count her blessings, having survived a potentially fatal car accident as a little girl.

“I was in my family’s VW bus, we drove everywhere and my family would go camping all the time. We were up in the mountains and it was snowing, and my dad was sightseeing,” Hendricks recalled to FOX411’s Pop Tarts column, while promoting her new role as a leading lady in EA’s latest video game “Need For Speed The Run.” “And we just slowly went off the road into this ditch and we didn’t know how deep it was… we really thought we were dying.”

Hendricks said her mom even prepared them all for the end.

“My mom went, ‘okay everyone, here we go.’ And luckily we stopped, after about five feet down,” she continued. “But we were tilted in this snow bank, my dad had to go out and hitchhike and get us pulled out. It was terrifying. I remember feeling a sense of calmness. I was like, ‘Oh, this is the calm you get before you die.’”

These days, the on-screen sensation steers clear of any daredevil type experiences and prefers to live out crazy behind-the-wheel experiences in a virtual world. Hendricks plays the role of ambitious street race car manager Sam Harper in the forthcoming race-for-you-life video game, alongside “Vampire Diaries” notable Sean Faris.

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The process of “filming” a video game – and subsequently being scrutinized from every possible point-of-view – was a little awkward for the genre first-timer.

“They’re capturing you from every angle. So you don’t have to move cameras and you don’t have to light. And you don’t have to do all the things that you would do in TV of film. It’s very strange. It’s very surreal,” Hendricks said. “It felt like doing a play because you’re on set and you have to sort of imagine your surroundings. And they give you an idea – this is going to be a kitchen, this is going to be a restaurant, these people are walking by you. And then Sean and I did this scene together and there are about two hundred cameras surrounding you.”

The wardrobe selection was also quite different from the darling dresses she dons as Joan Holloway in the hit AMC cable series, “Mad Men.”

“You show up and they put you in a skintight suit with your head coming out, and put dots all over your face so you feel absolutely bizarre,” she lamented. “And you’re in this Velcro-y kind of suit just walking around.”

Speaking of “Mad Men,” Hendricks loves that the fans haven’t turned crazy/stalker/obsessed on her – but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t get at least a little freaked out at times.

“’Mad Men’ fans are a pretty tame bunch, they’re not doing anything that crazy,” she added. “I think the strangest thing is that some people will come and say, ‘oh, my friend was Joan for Halloween.’ And that is weird – especially when it is guys. There are a lot of guys who dress up as Joan Holloway.”

And despite being on one of the most successful cable television shows, Hendricks is still dreaming of dreamy movie roles, and dreamy directors.

“I’m a huge Woody Allen fan and I’d love to be in a Woody Allen movie. I’m also a huge Tim Burton fan,” she said. “I’d love to do a Baz Luhrmann movie. I want to try everything!”

And unlike celebrities who bend over backwards trying to keep their personal lives private, Hendricks is indeed a breath of fresh air with nothing to hide.

“I’m an open book,” she assured us. “You ask me and I’ll tell you pretty much anything.”