Rose McGowan says she turned to directing after she grew of “tired of being sexualized,” noting a photo shoot for Rolling Stone in 2007 as the impetus for a change of heart about her career.

The Charmed alum said in an interview with Flatt magazine that she reached a point where she’d had enough of being used as a sex object.

“There was a moment, I was on the cover of Rolling Stone, with a fake tan and gun belt around me and breasts, they gave me some big bouffant hair and glossy lips, and I just was like, I’ve had it, I have just had it,” said McGowan.

After her revelation, McGowan said she “checked out” for a while, taking time to just enjoy herself and determine what she wanted in her career. She decided to pursue directing.

“It was not that I wasn’t meant to be an actress, it was just that I was meant to be in film, and I just was literally cast in the wrong role in life,” she said.

.@rosemcgowan on the @RollingStone cover that made her wake up and leave Hollywood: http://t.co/9r55buSKhh pic.twitter.com/A2NWZZQhEb

— Yahoo Movies (@YahooMovies) September 23, 2014

“I’m an artist, but I never felt like I was an artist as an actor,” she said. “Not because of how I was treated, because that’s not how artists are treated, or should be treated, or people should be treated.”

The 41-year-old actress, and now director, said it’s a good time for a woman in the the traditionally male-dominated director’s world.

“I think it’s a great time for women filmmakers,” said McGowan. “Women are being afforded greater roles in their destiny, or roles in art, or roles as directors, but why should women be “afforded” anything? I shouldn’t just be allowed to have something – it is my right. It is my right to create as much as it’s another human being’s right, and I think that comes first. Somebody asked if I thought a man would have made Dawn, and I don’t know if they could have. I don’t know if it would have occurred to them.”

McGowan shared her directorial debut of the short film Dawn at the premiere at the Grand Hotel in Los Angeles.