In which the icon—and new Cosmo cover star—digs into her first Netflix project, surviving early-2000s paparazzi, her friendship with Al Pacino, married life in Dubai, and what comes next.

So, listen. I could start by telling you how I grew up with Lindsay Lohan. How I can chart my entire childhood by which of her classic movies was playing in the background (The Parent Trap as I processed my own parents’ divorce; Freaky Friday, their second marriages; Mean Girls while I figured out what the actual hell high school was).

But I won’t, because every girl born within a decade of the now-36-year-old actor has some version of the same story—at least one film from LiLo’s decades-deep career that’s sat with them in a personality-forming way. And, of course, some narrative they’ve crafted in their mind about the nature of her celebrity and what she’s like as a person all this time later.

I’m going to focus instead on the right now, because Lindsay is right here in front of me in the iconically freckled flesh. She’s come all the way from her home in Dubai to shoot a cover story that’s a very big deal for obvious reasons. Getting the famously private star—so private that she moved to Dubai because paparazzi are illegal there—to sit down for a candid interview has been a feat nearly a year in the making. And we have a lot of new ground to cover.

For one, she’s getting ready for the November 10 premiere of her Netflix movie Falling for Christmas, to be followed by two more films in a multi-picture deal that promises the return of the rom-com queen we all love. Also on the long list of roles she’s currently juggling: executive producer of those Netflix movies, podcast host (The Lohdown With Lindsay Lohan), narrator of the Amazon Prime reality dating show Lovestruck High, Super Bowl commercial star (for Planet Fitness), newlywed…you get the idea. The internet is cheering for a “Lohan-aissance” for a reason.

And in the surprisingly intimate, barefaced moments before she steps in front of the camera, Lindsay seems pretty happy about it too. She’s perched on a glam chair at the Roxy Hotel in New York, sipping an iced matcha, surrounded by her team. There’s publicist Leslie Sloane (they’ve been together since The Parent Trap), hairstylist DJ Quintero, makeup artist Kristofer Buckle, manicurist Elle Gerstein, and Netflix rep Shannon Skoczylas. As they flutter around fielding calls, working out logistics, and wielding brushes of all kinds, Lindsay speaks to me with the unhurried thoughtfulness of someone who knows how easily her words could be twisted and misconstrued into inaccurate clickbait—how easily, how often they have been. She’s guarded but still quick to share a laugh. (I’m never quite sure whether I’m in on the joke or just, ever so frustratingly, outside of it.) It’s a striking combination of the weariness that comes from a lifetime of sharing herself with the world and a deep-in-her-bones excitement for what’s to come. Her favorite year of her life, she writes in her Cosmo Quiz? This one.