Two years ago, the Internet acknowledged that Claire Danes gives good cry face with a Tumblr tribute, teary super cut (above), and celebratory meme. Initially, and understandably, the actress reacted defensively to the news that two decades’ worth of her on-screen sobs had been taken out of context for Internet users’ enjoyment.

Last year, the Emmy winner told Elle magazine that she thought her “cry face” had been “objectified,” continuing, “It’s just the way feelings register on my face. It's not calculated; it's not an aggressive gesture. It's been isolated from the rest of my work, like it's a tacked on thing. It's not.”

In a new Harper’s Bazaar profile, the Homeland star says she is still surprised the expression is of particular intrigue to anyone. But she proceeds to own those Internet-celebrated facial contortions, as “ugly” as they may seem, without any apologies.

“I have my [husband, Hugh Dancy], who thinks I’m pretty enough in our life together, so I don’t need to be seducing the audience that way.” Then she goes on: “I think it’s also just my style, what I like in creative work, what I’ve always been attracted to, even as a little girl. I danced as a kid, that’s how I arrived at acting, and I took a class with a woman called Ellen Robbins. It was modern dance, so already a little raw. And I always had an appreciation for the macabre. We would do these improvisations and I remember one time, I was maybe 11 or 12, I was into grotesque movement, and I decided to do a dance where I was just doing a diagonal across stage, doing these weird movements and I landed and I just spat on the floor, like totally pretentious performance art. But it was great. I liked the ugly even as a kid, and I think that has stayed with me now.”

Given that Danes’s Homeland character has recently lost her lover on the successful Showtime drama, and is seen leaving her newborn for the Middle East in the fourth-season trailer, it seems safe to expect that Danes will be spilling even more tears on-screen this season.