Debi Mazar Reveals the Best Part of Being an 'Empty Nester' at 60: 'Freedom to Have Sex Whenever!' (Exclusive)

Debi Mazar is celebrating 60!

The actress, who rang in her birthday on Aug. 13, tells PEOPLE that she's looking forward to the next chapter, and she really doesn't care who knows it.

“I've never hid my age because I've always had this respect for older people. They've lived. And I've always loved talking to old people, so my agent was always like, 'Why are you announcing your age?' and I'm like, 'I don't give a f---!' I really don't," she says earnestly.

In 2020, Mazar relocated to Firenze, Italy with her husband and their two daughters, the youngest of whom just graduated from high school in May and will start university in the fall.

“At my age, I'm about to be an empty nester. And I'm going into a period where I've spent the past 23 years being on top of my children, and now I have more freedom to go work and not feel guilty,” Mazar says of the new transitional period for the family.

There are a few other things she has a newfound ability to do without her children home, too. 

“I have more freedom to walk around in the house naked or have sex whenever I feel like it!” she quips. 

Mazar and her husband, chef Gabriele Corcos, first met in 2001, when Mazar was on “holiday” in Europe. Her husband was sent to retrieve her at the airport as a favor to their mutual friend, French pianist Katia Lebeque.

“I never arrived [at the Florence airport] because my flight was late. Long story short, the next day we were sitting next to each other at dinner, and he asked if I wanted to get a pack of cigarettes and a cocktail in the piazza. And I said yes, and we ended up sitting on these steps of a 12th-century church talking for like two hours,” Mazar recalls.

She adds: “And when I went to kiss him goodnight, I didn't know to go right to left or left to right with a double kiss, and our lips smashed, and there was all this electricity. We spent the entire summer together, and then we couldn't be apart. And that was 23 years ago, and we're still together.”

Mazar often documents their travels together on her Instagram, with the couple having escaped to Spain earlier this summer for a romantic getaway. The geography of living overseas makes the travel easy, and Mazar is grateful.

“I'm exploring the world, and I love that I'm at an age where I'm fit and I can just jump on planes and discover new places and meet new people and take on different characters, working with different accents and different languages,” she says. “Here, it's not like America where the work is abundant and you make more money. It's the opposite. However, the roles that they write for women of a certain age are rich and complex, and they like women of a certain age here. So I feel that I went to the place that wanted me.”

Mazar’s recent work includes series Ladies in Black, and her newest project, Kaos, will premiere on Netflix on Aug. 29 and see her take on the role of Medusa. 

“She's almost like a character that works at DMV. You know the women that work at DMV? They're mean, generally. I get some nice ones, but [Medusa] is cranky and she's bitter because she has this curse put on her, and she's ugly and she lives in the underworld,” says Mazar with a laugh. “This show is going to be brilliant. It's the Greek gods. And [co-star] Jeff Goldblum actually lives in Florence, and I've been seeing him here and there for dinner [with] his lovely wife.”

When she isn’t busy working (or otherwise filling her time in a house without any children around), Mazar says she just tries to be mindful. She counts her blessings and enjoys the opportunities that living in Italy has afforded her.

“Would I like to be younger for my energy? Sure. Would I like to be younger for my body? Sure. Nothing is the way it was, obviously. But for me, 60 means I've lived a good long life so far. I was also a person who lost hundreds and hundreds of friends to the AIDS crisis, and I just feel very blessed to have lived this long. You have to celebrate every day that you're alive. And I'm having the best time of my life,” she says. “This past decade has been brilliant. I've learned so much. I've also learned how to be a bit more quiet, how to hear nature, how to not care what people say, to not care what people think of me.”

Online, Mazar is no more immune to the trolls and hate-comments than the rest of the world, often taking flack for her appearance and all of the “filler” people accuse her of using. She has but one message for those individuals.

“I'm like, ‘I actually don't. This is natural!’ My mother has these cheekbones. I have cheekbones. My lips are kind of collapsing, but I have naturally small but cute lips, and I always had snatched my hair back just to pull my face up,” she says with a shrug.

“So 60, for me, it just means I go to the doctor more often. I have to get my checkups. I'm very on top of that. Here's the thing, you can find out anybody's age. So people might go, 'Oh, Debi Mazar, she's not a new idea.' But then they say, 'Well, look at Debi Mazar. She kind of looks good. And she's still funny."

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Kaos premieres on Aug. 29 on Netflix.