“I have such a mushy head! I'm still in movie mode. “I’m still in crisis,” she confesses in that gentle but familiar singsong.

“We also often filmed in the evenings. That's why I still feel like I'm stumbling over my words and a little confused!” she says.

For the first half hour, Anderson rushes through our interview at breakneck speed, her speech hurried as she jumps quickly from one topic to the next. It's a pretty impenetrable monologue, broken only by the odd nervous giggle.

She is self-deprecating and funny. For example, when referencing a famous look she wore in the '90s—a huge fluffy pink hat, sequined sheer pants, and a white corset—she says, “Everyone asked me, 'Who was your stylist back then?' the pink?'“ Hat?' And I say, 'Do you think any stylist would have let me out the door (with that)?!'”

But the self-deprecating nonsense, as funny as it is (crazy is a word she often uses to describe herself), makes me sad sometimes. It may feel like their armor, a coping mechanism that is part of their protective, public-facing shield. And she shocks me more than once when she reveals that she struggles with deep insecurities surrounding her image.

As it turns out, the parsnip makes a convenient icebreaker, because we're here to talk about, among other things, her first cookbook of vegetable recipes. I love you: recipes from the heartwhich will be available for sale later this month, is full of homemade recipes from her vegetable garden in the town of Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

“It’s not a vegan cookbook. “I don’t tell other people how to eat,” Anderson (well-known vegan) says hastily, clearly worried that he might come across as preachy. “I just have so many vegetables in my garden! I’m constantly canning, canning, making sauces and just trying to find cool ways to prepare vegetables.”

We're also here to talk about her vegan, cruelty-free skincare line, Sonsie, which she acquired earlier this year, as well as her renaissance as a movie star with the aforementioned The naked weapon, as well as The Last Showgirl with Jamie Lee Curtis, both coming out next year.

And this has been happening early on in the industry The Last Showgirl could well (whisper it) put Anderson on the path to awards season recognition. Which – and Anderson herself once again admits this self-deprecatingly: “This is hysterical,” she says with a laugh – is certainly a whole new era for the actor formerly known as Barb Wire.

But industry buzz aside, Anderson has definitely entered a new era. And perhaps for the first time in her five decades in the public eye, she is calling the shots and dictating how she is presented to the world. After a lifetime of objectification, she is now regaining control.