Rose McGowan moves intuitively around her LA home in this tender portrait by Marlene Marino, shot earlier this year when the photographer captured the American actress for the latest issue of lifestyle title Apartamento. The Brian De Palma and Quentin Tarantino favorite made her name in tongue-in-cheek slasher Scream and supernatural series Charmed, and established her cult status in director Gregg Araki's 1995 comedy thriller The Doom Generation, which saw the pin-up entangled in a sordid ménage à trois. Yet shooting today’s short was a strict case of ‘Two’s company.’ Having met through director Ridley Scott’s Black Dog Films—set to release McGowan’s directorial debut Dawn—the actress and Marino bonded over a shared attitude towards beauty. “Marlene and I were just celebrating femininity,” she says of the visceral short that is soundtracked by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, who previously scored Shane Meadows’ This Is England. “I think people can rise higher than the consensus of what is considered sexy; our only objective was to do something natural. I didn’t act, I just flowed into it.”

What was it like to see yourself in this completely uninhibited state?
Rose McGowan: It was really transformative: it actually made me cry. It was born out of reclaiming my own ideas of what beauty is. I have realized that I don’t have to be bound by the “rules” here in Los Angeles or Hollywood. It is me, but not an artificial version.

What’s next for you?
RM: I’m going to direct my first feature film, taking things I borrowed from Marlene. I’m also making a show about art and pornography. It will be custom-made porn but not in the kind of way that you’ve seen or that you think of it.

Is that in production?
RM: I just shot the teaser for it and in it I’m wearing a strap-on. It’s pretty balls-out, I’m not gonna lie—it’s going to look insane.

What’s your experience of pornography?
RM: I have never liked it and don’t find it sexually interesting: I don’t like their hair,  makeup, or acting. How am I supposed to get excited by something that I think is cornball and not beautiful?

So what would you consider to be sexy?
RM: Oh I don’t know, maybe two people in a lovely field on a farm, shot like Terence Malick.