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Credit: Jennifer Livingston

On newsstands this week, the actress who guest edits harper by Harper’s Bazaar’s September issue, talks The Vampire Diaries, living adventurously and politics.

Here’s some:

On her shocking departure from the hit CW series The Vampire Diaries in 2015:

“That was the plan from the get-go. If anything, the fact that [leaving] terrified me drove me even more. I needed to feel that fear of “Oh, my Gold, what if I never get a job again?” That just made me want to work five times as hard to make sure that didn’t happen.”

On her roles since then:

“The things I want to do aren’t necessarily the things that are expected of me. I don’t want to play a teenager anymore. I want to play adult roles and be challenged and work with great filmmakers and tell incredible stories, and that has meant being really picky.”

On living an adventurous life:

“My rule of thumb is, I’ll try anything once. I have a healthy–or possibly unhealthy–obsession with trying things for the first time. Nobody imagines me to be by myself backpacking, so they just think, “It can’t be her.”

On how her modest background helped shape her political views:

“I come from an immigrant family, and I think it’s unacceptable to treat anyone like that,” of Donald Trump’s “build the wall” rhetoric. “Hopefully he’ll get impeached. Or indicted. Or both. He just doesn’t act like a president. He acts like a reality star on a terrible, horrible show that should never be aired. And he’s responsible for incredibly important decisions for the country that I live in, so my opinion does matter whether or not I had a chance to vote.”

www.harpersbazaar.com/ninadobrev