Kathy Bates was floored when she first saw herself on the set of Bad Santa 2, fully dressed as her tough biker-chick character—complete with a slicked back mohawk, tattoo-covered arms, and vintage black leather jacket with chains. “Oh my God!” she recalls of her transformation. “It was such an empowering moment. It’s one of the coolest looks I’ve had in a film. Only pretty young girls get to play biker chicks, but I kind of broke the rule. Women my age at 68 can be badass too.”

Bates is hitting a new stride with her latest role as Billy Bob Thornton’s cruel, foul-mouthed mother in the upcoming raunchy comedy, the follow-up to original Bad Santa. Starting Nov. 23, moviegoers can see the Oscar, Golden Globe, and Emmy winner as never before: she’s cracking sexual jokes, cursing, handling sex toys, and even sitting on a toilet for a sight gag. “It’s the most crass character I’ve ever played,” Bates tells Vanity Fair while snuggling up on a hotel suite sofa in Los Angeles on a November afternoon. “When I was saying all the dirty jokes, I just thought, I’m going for it. I might as well dive right in the deep end.”

It’s that vigor and enthusiasm that has made Bates one of the most respected actresses in Hollywood. She has acted in over 180 film and television projects, playing everything from an obsessed fan in the 1990 drama Misery (for which she won an Oscar) to charismatic socialite Molly Brown in 1997’s Titanic to Jack Nicholson's hot-tub partner in the 2002 drama About Schmidt. But it’s her latest turn in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story anthology that catapulted Bates back into the spotlight. Now Bates isn’t just thriving—she’s dominating.

“Ryan Murphy has resurrected my career,” Bates says emphatically. “This is the third act, and I never dreamed any of this stuff would happen. Before American Horror Story, I was doing [NBC’s drama Harry’s Law] and I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The show got cancelled, and our audience was dismissed because they were too old. So the message I was getting was, get the fuck out of here! You’re too old, or you’re sick, you don’t have any more tits, you had ovarian cancer, nobody wants you anymore. That was in my head.”

Fortunately, Bates successfully beat the disease for a second time—she also battled ovarian cancer in 2003—and chose to remove both breasts as a preventive measure. Her rise back to the A-list began during her recovery period. Bates, who was a huge fan of American Horror Story, met with her friend Jessica Lange for lunch and asked if she could get in contact with Murphy about any acting opportunities. Soon, he called and invited Bates to play Madame Delphine LaLaurie in American Horror Story: Coven. Her performance as a serial killer in 1830s New Orleans received critical acclaim—and scored her a second Emmy award. “Because of Ryan, my career opened,” says Bates. “He really did it all. He brought me back to life during a difficult period in my life.”

She’s been a regular on the FX horror series ever since. Bates played bearded lady Ethel Darling in Freak Show, Iris the Hotel Cortez manager in Hotel, and both the Butcher and Agnes Mary Winstead, the schizophrenic actress who re-enacts The Butcher, in Roanoke. “I love that the show is so dark and that it’s so funny and clever,” says Bates. “But it’s the risk taking, it’s the writing, it’s the imagination that I love the most. We always don’t know what's going to happen. We just know we are going to play a certain character. So you really have to take a leap of faith. You don’t know what’s going to happen in episode two until you read episode two. As an actress, it’s the most fun and challenging job.”