Famke Janssen just finished stitching the finishing touches to her outfit.

It was a late night for the Dutch-born actress, who had just flown home to New York City from Bulgaria, where she’s filming the post-apocalyptic disaster thriller One Second After. But she allotted time to customize the herringbone jumper she’s wearing for our video call, carefully sewing shiny red butterflies across the fabric.

“We gotta make sure we see the butterflies,” Janssen tells me as we set up the camera for our conversation for Yahoo’s Unapologetically series.

It’s a fashion statement, sure, but it’s more. For Janssen, customizing her clothes is a nod to her grandmother, who sewed her childhood wardrobe, inspiring the star’s lifelong love of fashion. The butterflies are more than decoration; they’re a declaration. And in Netflix’s Amsterdam Empire, Janssen spreads her wings wider than ever, starring and, for the first time, serving as an executive producer and co-costume designer.

“I've been in this business for almost 30 years, and I've done 80 films, so I feel like I've earned that status,” says the entertainer, who has also portrayed Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye, Jean Grey/Phoenix in the X-Men movies and Lenore Mills in Taken.

Here, Janssen opens up about “wearing many hats” while making the series — in which she plays a colorful, complex one-hit wonder pop star whose husband leaves her for his younger, pregnant mistress — and discusses unrealistic beauty standards for women, the importance of self-love and why social media isn’t for her.

You said you wish you had appreciated yourself more when you were younger. Can you tell me more about that?

I remember when, in looking back at photos of my younger self, I go, “Oh, it wasn't so bad.” No matter what age you are, you end up … being hypercritical of yourself. Then, as you — what’s the best way to say it [because] “aging” is not a good word — ripen or mature, you look back and go, “What was my issue?” I love how I’m so much more accepting of who I am now than I ever was before at any age prior to this. I think in the end, it's about self-love, and once you master that, nothing else seems that important. It all becomes irrelevant. It's liberating.

Your character, Betty, is a badass — she doesn’t take the sudden end of her marriage lying down. What drew you to the role, and what did you want to bring to her that felt unexpected?

She's not driven by revenge, but she's been incredibly and deeply and publicly hurt because her husband cheats on her with a woman he also impregnates. Put yourself in that position. What happens very often is that sometimes we do it in our minds and sometimes — in the case of Betty — she does it in real life and goes out for revenge. But I wanted to make sure, in playing that character, it wasn't going to be a one-dimensional journey of a woman who was vengeful and wanted to hurt her husband and the new girlfriend, but someone who was deeply hurt.

It must have felt empowering stepping into the additional roles of executive producer and costume designer. Did you have to push to get those credits?

Absolutely, especially executive producer. In the Netherlands, where we filmed, we had to deal with some local rules. Actors are not executive producers. In America, it's common [but] there, it’s not. … I ended up getting it, but it's not something they're used to. It was very important to me because I thought: If I go back to the country where I was born, I've never acted there before, and I'm coming back with all these films under my belt and all those years of experience, then, yes, I want to come back with more control.

Having played a Bond girl — that idealized version of perfection and glamour — in 1995’s GoldenEye, does it make ripening in the public eye more complicated?

I think for women of any age, it's not an easy time to get older. The pressures are so incredibly high, and the standards are unrealistic because of social media, all the filters and the emphasis put on eternal youth. It's just unrealistic. No one's going to actually be able to look like that naturally, unless you start altering every part of your being. I think we've reached a peak, and I find it personally a bit uncomfortable — and also all the questions about it, because men don't get asked any of the questions that we as women are being asked all the time about the pressures of aging. So I think we need to start taking a look at that and go: Why is this so sexist? What is going on?

There's really no winning either way, no matter what you do.

No, there isn't. I will say it's better than the alternative — because the alternative is dying. So let's be grateful that we're here. I love the elephant world because the eldest matriarch is the wisest and runs and rules everything. I want to go to that world for all of us and start looking at it from a different perspective.

You’re not on social media. How has that helped your well-being?

I did it for many different reasons — mental health being the priority, because it's harsh. It's a harsh reality out there. I'm also intensely private. I've done very little press, considering the types of movies I've done, because I love and value my privacy. But it comes at a price. The price I pay for not being [online] is I'm not as famous. I'm not making as much money. I don't get as much attention [or the same opportunities as] someone with 9 million followers. The price they're paying might not seem high to them, but for me, it would be astronomical. I'm so sensitive by nature. If 10 people said something nice about me and one person said something hurtful, I would hang on to [the negative comment]. I just never built thick skin.

Also, in order to remain an independent thinker, you have to start setting boundaries, because influences, algorithms — everything leads people down a path. [What is] difficult about social media, as an outsider, is [seeing how] people become so divided. …I think we have so much more in common than we don't. I'm friends with people [of all] political affiliations, [cultures and ethnicities]. I don't really want to be influenced to become very “anti” or “for” something by being led down certain paths.

How do you feel when you watch your early films? Can you focus on the performance, or do you think about things that were happening in your life at that time?

I tend not to watch anything if I can. Sometimes you have to. For Amsterdam Empire, I’m executive producer, so I watched everything 7,000 times over. … [I learned] it's very difficult to disassociate and say, “Oh, this scene works — or doesn't” or “My performance here is good — or not” because you just are too busy with what happened on set that day.

But recently, they were re-releasing Rounders and City of Industry — two films I did a long time ago — and I thought, I better watch them. It’s been so long. That was the moment I realized it takes that long — that many decades— to have some perspective on your performance. When you're not too close anymore and you can objectively watch something. But generally, no, I don't go back and watch anything unless I'm forced to.

If your 13-year-old self could see you now, do you think she’d be proud of the woman you are today?

I'm proud of myself, and I think that if my younger version looked at me now, she probably would be too. At that time, if someone had told me: “You're going to move to New York. You're going to have an international career. You’re going to act and do all these things — travel the world,” I wouldn't have believed it. It's been an incredible journey so far, and I’m grateful for it. I don't take anything for granted — still.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.