CHICAGO (WLS) — “Ava: The Secret Conversations” just opened to rave reviews, starring Elizabeth McGovern at the Studebaker Theater.

The Evanston native plays one of the most compelling women to ever grace the movie screen, Ava Gardner.

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McGovern also wrote the play, and talked about this passion project.

Gardner was in her 60s and broke, when she asked writer Peter Evans to tell her story to get some cash.

And there was a lot to tell.

“The choices she made in her life were always so far ahead of herself in her kind of, her relationship with her own sexuality,” McGovern said.

She was an independent woman, when it wasn’t easy to be that.

“She was that without really thinking about it. In fact, I think she was quite conflicted about the fact that she wanted to live her life and she indulged her appetites for for everything,” McGovern said.

Gardner fired the writer, but Evans released his book after her death. McGovern wrote the play, which she stars in with Aaron Costa Ganis.

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“By the time she gets to the relationship with Frank, she’s a fully formed, mature woman,” McGovern said. “They were both sort of equally vibrant people. And so, I think it caused a lot of friction between them. But it was also the reason they they had such a connection.”

McGovern’s first movie was with Robert Redford, and she got to come home to the North Shore.

“I had moved away when I was 9. And then when we came back to shoot that movie, we were shooting in a high school with probably the kids I would have gone to school with had I stayed,” McGovern said.

McGovern just closed an amazing chapter of her career.

“I feel the choice was on this one to listen to the audience, to respond to what they like and give them what they like,” McGovern said.

She talked about why it’s so important to bring this story back to Chicago.

“I feel my identity is really, really this. It’s, it’s the Evanston girl, no matter where I ever went afterward. And they, they say that life takes you unexpected places, but love takes you home. And I feel love; it brought me back here with something that I feel very proud of and connected to and I’ve worked very hard on. So, it’s a really special thing for me,” McGovern said.

McGovern’s co-star, Aaron Costa Ganis, who gets to play Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra and more in the show, will be interviewed in an upcoming story.

“Ava: The Secret Conversations” is at the Studebaker Theater through Oct. 12.