“I remember I used to talk about ‘playing a bitch,’” Diane Lane said, sitting in a banquette at a hotel in West Hollywood, sipping tea. “That was a jargon that I would use. I don’t even know how I feel about that anymore, because one person’s bitch is another person’s hero.”

That is certainly one word viewers might use to describe Annette Shepherd, the character Lane plays on the final season of Netflix’s House of Cards, which premieres November 2. Annette is a former school friend of Claire Underwood’s—or is it frenemy? Each woman has processed the genteel, ladylike expectations placed on them in different ways. Claire is now brazenly wielding power as the president of the United States, while Annette quietly pulls strings in the shadows as one half of the brother-sister team who run Shepherd Unlimited (with Greg Kinnear as Bill Shepherd), a massive conglomerate that has the power to make or break world leaders.

There was as much drama and history made behind the scenes of House of Cards this season as there was on-screen, of course. Kevin Spacey was fired from his lead role as Frank Underwood after being accused of sexual misconduct, forcing the show to suspend production. (Spacey has apologized to actor Anthony Rapp, and sought treatment in the wake of further allegations.) “Eventually, the show’s producers, including Robin Wright, devised a way to face the problem head-on, putting women—and more importantly, female fury—at the dead center of the story. “The reign of the middle-aged white man is over,” Wright’s President Claire Underwood declares at one point. “The Bill Shepherds of the world who won’t let go, have to go.”

Lane had just finished several days of promoting the series, and she seemed both mellow and frazzled. Her conversational style was effervescently slippery, shifting between past and present so that it sometimes felt like she was keeping parallel discussions going on in her head. (At one point she warned me, “When you play this [recording] back, you’re gonna think I’m super odd!”) She explained that in addition to the demands of her work, she was absorbing the recent deaths of a friend and her 18-year-old cat. “It’s like many planets are spinning at the same time,” she said.

Lane has been a working actress since the age of six when she began performing with the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York. I feel like I grew up watching her characters grow up—from the cool teens of A Little Romance, The Outsiders, and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains to the passionate adults of Unfaithful, Under the Tuscan Sun, and Cinema Verite. In her 47-year career, she has played characters who are steely, sweet, and everything in between, but she briefly quit movies around 2008 when the parts just didn’t feel substantial enough.

Now Lane said she finds herself in a culture and an industry being changed by women speaking up against abuses of power—and she loves it, even telling her 25-year-old daughter, “I gotta learn about the culture I’m participating in, because it’s changing so fast that I’m back to being a student.”

Lane also is learning about the world of TV. She recently shot a pilot for a possible FX adaptation of the graphic novel Y: The Last Man, which she hopes will be picked up. And in addition to her role in House of Cards, Lane stars in Matthew Weiner’s Amazon anthology series, The Romanoffs. It allowed her to dive into “Matthew Weiner-land” and to “see his next move, or response to expectations” after Mad Men, she said with a throaty laugh. “I love his capacity for vision long-term,” she said. “I believe, with time, there’s going to be an aha moment for the viewers of The Romanoffs. . . . The exploration is part of it. What do you see in it? It’s kind of a Rorschach test.”

Vanity Fair: This whole TV experience with House of Cards is new for you right?

Diane Lane: I feel like I’ve been shot out of a cannon. . . . And for Robin, I think literally she must feel it’s like having a baby—this is her baby. She directed more episodes than anybody.

She lived through this whole series, and then she has this season that embodies her character, Claire Underwood, coming into power.

It’s not lost on me, especially when you factor in that her last name used to be hyphenated [Robin Wright-Penn], and now it ain’t.

Especially considering what little I’ve read about that relationship with her ex-husband [Sean Penn].

Me, too. Oh, I can’t say “me too” anymore, I have to say “me also.” I also don’t pretend to know. I’m just saying, she has maximized her potential self. I just think that’s beautiful. . . . Season 5 wound up having her perfectly situated in the zeitgeist. And, you know, the wrecking ball [regarding Spacey] . . . turned into more of an opportunity than could ever have been foretold.

I kept going back to look at the timing of when the season was shooting and when Spacey was fired—the season was already in progress, right?

I was on another film set, and everybody [was] looking at their phones, looking at me, and I was like, “What’s going on? Is everyone talking about me, am I paranoid?” I’m like, “Is something bad happening in the world that I don’t know about?” [Somebody told me] “The show has been canceled.” . . .

But it was so much larger than the show because it was part of the movement. Which movement? I mean, is it #MeToo, or is it Time’s Up—which one?

This moment really began with Harvey Weinstein going down. Some people worried it was only going to affect people whose power was waning, so to fire Kevin Spacey, the star of this big show, was interesting.

I’m sure there were a lot of factors in the decision, but Robin was heralded—and rightly so—as the heroine of the show being completed. It’s meaningful. You must respond and triumph and not be taken down. . . .

On a less zeitgeist-y note—is that a word?—I would say it was so fun and it made me feel a certain kind of . . . highness. But I don’t mean like royalty, I mean like stoned. I felt high on the surreal-ness of spending the moments you do on a set killing time with your fellow actors. I’ve only really known them from watching the show, so to me, they were their characters. . . . I remember the first time I was in the makeup and hair trailer, I said to Robin, “I just want to thank you for the job”—because ain’t no way I’m here without her vetting me! At that point, Kevin was still part of the show. I was just so glad I had that moment when it was pure and not tainted with any of the rest of the history. Or maybe it’s “herstory” at this point.

There are some fantastic interactions between your character and Claire Underwood. The repartee is like something out of an old movie.

But we don’t [pass] the rectal test, right? Am I saying it right?

You mean Bechdel? Like Alison Bechdel, the Bechdel test [which looks at whether a movie, TV show, or book features at least two women talking to each other about something besides men]?

Yes, that’s it. When the Bechdel test was first mentioned, I thought, yeah, what’s up with that? Why are guys always able to talk about whatever is going on in the story and then the ladies are coming on talking about the guys? I mean, it’s just dumb. . . . We are playing history back now, looking at things differently.

I’ve grown up with you through your movies: A Little Romance, The Fabulous Stains, all the way through to the present. It’s a pretty cool career.

I know actors always have the things they’re most known for, and it works its way down in terms of the success it had. Some things weren’t necessarily successful when they came out, but they wound up impacting deeper.

That goes back to that idea that we are in this moment where we are looking back at our lives and seeing things through new filters.

I wonder what it is like to be 20 now, because everything is thrown up in the air, almost like the tablecloth has been ripped off, and all the dishes are midair and you can just do whatever feels right to you. . . .

[My father] was into boxing in college and he had [me for] a daughter and it was just cool to be his buddy. He treated me like a son. I was raised as a person, not as a gender-specific entity. Does that make sense? And I loved it—until I got mad at him and decided I was done being raised like a little man, and I was actually more interested in being his daughter than his son. That didn’t happen until I was about 12, puberty and all that.

I also didn’t want to act anymore, I wanted to do other things in my life, and he was like, “No, no, this is an offer you can’t refuse.” And I was like, “That’s a line from a movie about the mafia, that’s not cool.” . . . This idea [to be an actress] was not mine, but it’s gone pretty well.

It has gone very well. What did you want to do if not acting?

I wanted to study law and government. I didn’t have the terminology for what I aspired to, but I can remember the feeling in my body. Now I suppose it’s social justice and probably prison reform. I was going to work through all the failed ideas that had been applied . . . This is the 70s, so this is before it exploded into what it became with the industrial prison complex.

You could’ve fixed it.

Are you mocking me?

Not at all. Who knows? It was another path, right?

Yeah, another path. It’s so interesting because it’s a time of life right now when I’m seeing things much more circumspectly. I always craved elders around because they bring a calm and a sanity to the anxieties of youth. . . . Life becomes a Leonard Cohen song—there’s a bittersweet reflective quality, and your priorities are easier to name. . . . So I’m sneaking up on that elder stage, and I can’t wait. I can’t fucking wait to let my hair go and just be somebody else. It’s sort of like playing a role.

My dad used to say, “You have to know what your persona is as an actor.” I was like, “No, you don’t. You just show up and do your job.” And I thought, was he right? Did I ever do it? Do I care? Does it matter anymore? And is that arcane advice?”

You started in avant-garde theater at La MaMa when you were super-young, right?

Super young! No-front-teeth young! In my first passport, I had no front teeth. I ran out of pages because of all the touring for the plays.

You were thrown into the deep end of the 1970s, surrounded by adults. Do you look back on that period now with different eyes?

I remember getting a hold of the brownies in Amsterdam. How happy was I, and then I woke up the next day. They forgot to tell the seven-year-old not to eat the brownies. . . . Fortunately, it was not a day when we had a performance. It was no big deal. It was over very quickly, I think, I didn’t even know what hit me, but those were the best damn brownies I ever ate. . . . I wound up seeing Clockwork Orange in Denmark when I was nine. That was scarring. I’m still dealing with that. So some decisions got away, but you know what? It made me stronger. [Laughs.]

It’s a fine, fine line, isn’t it? You want to protect your innocence in your purest form of self-knowing, and at the same time, you don’t want to be anybody’s fool or be taken advantage of or be duped or be harmed, especially as a female who doesn’t have upper-body strength, even when you grow all the way up. You’re not going to be the strongest person in the room.

At the Los Angeles Women’s March, Natalie Portman gave a speech where she talked about what it was like as a pre-teen actress to have people looking at her and commenting on her body.

Oh, my God. Having to market A Little Romance and doing press . . . I’d have to [take photos for] magazines, and it was kinda harrowing. It’s not dysmorphia, but there’s got to be a word that encompasses the gap between my self-presentation and my truth. Did I even aspire to be what I was projecting? Or was that just an imposed fantasy upon me that I hadn’t really researched, and wouldn’t have agreed with had I researched it? I might have been like, “Hell, nah. This is my hair, I didn’t get it done. I hope you still like me.” [Points to her rumpled hair.]

There’s long been such a premium on likability in female characters. As an actress, you have to find roles where you can live within that, right?

It is entertainment, we have to be reminded. And I don’t mean that as though it’s going to be junk food, but not everything is intended to be the most nourishing possible. Some things are indulgences, and God knows we need them now more than ever. They always say whenever there’s a dark time in history it’s good for booze. It’s good for the employment of actors because we need the fairy tale. We need the laughter. We need to have our tears. We need to set our hair on fire, and somebody’s got to represent that and do that for us. And somebody’s got to rebel and be ugly and possess our shadow nature, which we can’t indulge in. But we can watch the show that does.

House of Cards definitely does that.

It so does it. But I had a friend who said to me, “So are you a bad guy or good guy on the show?” There’s no such thing as any “good ones” on this show because everybody’s clambering for power. And nakedly so—it’s delicious in its nakedness while remaining very astute about law, how it works, how we got where we are, holding up a mirror to things we wish were not true.

Your character and Robin’s character grew up together, and they seem to have opposing approaches to femininity. This season Claire is openly seizing the power, and your character almost uses femininity like armor, right? She’s there with her brother, almost covertly.

There’s a doublespeak. . . . [Characters make] suggestions that are encased in the packaging of a caution: “Gee, it would be terrible if such-and-such were to happen to her, wouldn’t it?” It is quite a task to walk that tightrope of this show, and it’s what makes it special.

You basically play a Koch sister.

I can nod. [Nods and purses her lips as if to indicate silence is required.]

It’s an amazing gathering of formidable actresses. Were you ever on set at the same time? In addition to Robin Wright, there’s Patricia Clarkson and Constance Zimmer . . .

There’s a scene where I get to encounter Patricia, in passing, sort of, and those ships passing each other in their lanes in the Oval Office was just an interesting moment for me, and it will be for the audience, too. . . . I’m grateful that I get to be part of representing women going forward, beyond childbearing years.

Let me back up and go way back to what my father said to me at one point. My dad said, “You know what? I didn’t raise you for bondage.” . . . He would say, “You gotta have your own money. You can’t be beholden.” . . . He was so concerned that I was going to wind up losing any freedoms that he had. Why couldn’t he pass it on to his girl child?

The women in all of his frames of reference were very controlled, and contrived, and delicate, and had suppositions imposed on them. He would read me The Bad Seed when I was four. I was like, “You are fucking with my head. This is not O.K. I’m going to go to therapy, and it’s your fault!” But it was sweet because he was trying to say, “It’s O.K. to be dark and scary.”

It sounds like he prepared you in some ways?

He prepared me for what the world has become.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.