Sometimes, a role is too good.

In 2007, Jeff Daniels starred in an off-Broadway production of David Harrower's "Blackbird," a transfixing drama about a man's encounter with a woman he had seduced years earlier, when she was a 12-year-old child.

There were rumblings that the successful limited-run production might move to Broadway.

Daniels said, though, he couldn't do that: His role was so intensely demanding, so draining, that it would be too much to keep performing it.

It was a bit of a surprise, then, when it was announced last year that he'd signed on to do the play again, in a new Broadway production (which opened Thursday night at the Belasco Theatre).

"[Producer] Scott Rudin called and asked if I would do it," Daniels said in a phone conversation last week. "A lot has happened to me as an actor [since the original production]. I've gotten better. I just knew I had more to throw at the character. And if you don't have some feeling of wanting to be challenged, you shouldn't be an actor."

Daniels got together with director Joe Mantello, who'd staged the off-Broadway production but indicated he wanted to start fresh with the new one.

"I would say it's about 75 percent different," Daniels said. "The staging has changed; the motivations are different. There's a lot more going on with my character. I go deeper. He's more fearful; there's more at stake for him. By the end, he goes where he's supposed to go."

Daniels' character, Ray, was sent to prison after his exploitive affair with the underage Una. After being released, he moved away, changed his name and started a new life, only to be tracked down by Una 15 years after they last saw each other.

What ensues is as emotionally raw a confrontation as you'll see in a theater, as the pair grapple, in real time, with what happened all those years earlier and scarred them both for life.

Part of the change in the production was a new performer, Michelle Williams, playing Una. The role was played earlier by Alison Pill.

With a fresh actress bringing her own interpretation and nuances to the part, Daniels said his portrayal inevitably shifted.

"It's all about adjusting to the other actor," he said. "You have to listen and react at every moment." That's particularly demanding in "Blackbird" because the two performers are essentially alone onstage for the play's entire 80 minutes. (There's a minor character who makes a very brief appearance.) What's made it easier for him, said Daniels, is having done "God of Carnage" on Broadway in 2009. That's not as fraught a play, but, in resemblance to "Blackbird," it's made up of a stream of confrontations.

Another help, he said, was having starred in the HBO series "The Newsroom," which ran from 2012 to 2014.

"The dialogue in 'Blackbird' is tough to handle," Daniels said. "It's off-the-beat, with fragments of sentences, and the first time I did the play, I was so concerned about remembering it all, it interfered with my performance.

"Aaron Sorkin's writing for 'Newsroom' was very different. His sentences just flowed. But there was so much to memorize, it helped me deal with the dialogue in 'Blackbird.'"

The most vitalizing thing, though, probably is Daniels' newfound ability to leave his work at the theater.

When he comes in before a performance, he said, he tries to get inside Ray, to feel his needs and desires, to think the way Ray thinks. However, instead of taking the character home with him after the show, as he used to, he's able to clear his mind — even after having ratcheted up the role's emotional stakes from the off-Broadway production.

"I've learned to disconnect from it," he said. "After the performance, it just feels like I've had a really good workout. I go home, and I'm able to go to sleep.

"You realize that it's all just make-believe – on a professional level."

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