Sara Foster wears many hats (producer, actress, podcaster, designer, mom), but she’s always had one “secret dream” that she feels “doesn’t ever usually happen for people” — until it happened to her.

Foster, who is currently executive producing the hit Netflix series Nobody Wants Thisis stepping into her new role as a celebrity brand ambassador for Bobbi Brown Cosmeticsand it’s “so exciting for many reasons,” she says.

For one, “this is the big leagues,” the star, 44, tells PEOPLE on the set of her debut campaign in New York City. She continues, “they can have whoever they want, so it’s so nice that they wanted to pick someone who’s a mom and an entrepreneur and not 25.”

But most of all, Foster shares, “It’s cool because I have vivid memories of buying Bobbi Brown Cosmetics at the makeup counter with my mom when I was a teenager.” Thinking back on the brand’s iconic foundation sticks, she adds, “It was my first introduction to makeup in so many ways.” The company and her beauty POV have been aligned ever since.

“They are not trying to be anyone other than who they are,” she explains. “It (stands for) the everyday woman, the woman who does not put herself in a box and who is kind of trying to figure it out as she goes and doesn’t apologize for it” — or aging, for that matter, which Foster is embracing.

“We are now looking at women who are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s as role models because they’ve lived life. I’m not knocking 20-year-olds, they are incredible, but when I was 25, the people I was looking up to were 25 and now it’s all shifting. We’re looking at older women as more beautiful than ever because they radiate life experience, they radiate wisdom, they radiate just all the good things,” she says. “Now at 44, I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s all just beginning.’”

Foster’s journey with makeup started early on, and unlike her sisters, Jordan and Erin Foster (the latter of whom Sara works with on various business ventures such as fashion brand Favorite Daughter), she spent her spare time learning about beauty because she “went to a fancy private school and was with girls that were doing fancy things.”

Her interest in it continued when she got to Hollywood, so much so that she and Erin sometimes think back at her tendency to over-bronze and over-tan and laugh. “I apparently didn’t have a mirror in the early 2000s because every red carpet photo of me (taken) when I was strictly acting…it’s like a running joke. (Erin) will be like, ‘Did you go chill on the bronzer?’”

But now, the former 90210 star says she’s left that version of her behind, favoring something a bit more stripped back and true to her.

“It’s about good skincare, looking like myself, doing things that accentuate my naturalness. We’re in this new era of embracing what we have.” In fact, keeping up a proper skincare routine is her goal when she has a “true moment to be still.” That, in addition to getting sleep, ingesting electrolytes and doing the “inner work.”

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These days, Foster also sees her beauty routine mirrored back at her by her daughter Valentina.

She explains that her 14-year-old is “really good at doing her own makeup, but will go out on a Friday night with her friends with just a cheek (stain), and I’d like to think that’s ’cause she sees a mom that goes out Friday nights with just a cheek stain and a little something on my eye. I’m not doing my makeup for an hour.”

So when Foster openly speaks about her appearance around her children, also including soon-to-be 10 year old Josephine, she’s intentional with her words. “I have to catch myself as a mom spiraling about how I look. It’s normal. We all spiral. We all go, ‘I’m having a bad hair day. I’m having a bad skin day. This outfit doesn’t look good on me.’ So I have to really catch myself because they watch you,” she says.

Foster constantly compared herself to other girls when she was younger, but her teens are on the road to self-love. “My daughter has freckles and moles and she never covers them up.” She adds: “We just want our girls to not obsess (over their appearances). We want them to fall in love with themselves.”