Kathy Bates Clarifies She's Not Retiring Amid Matlock’s Success: 'I Would Love for This to Keep Going' (Exclusive)

For Kathy Bates, the call to Hollywood is never far.

In fact, all she needs to do is step into the backyard of her Los Angeles home, where the iconic Hollywood sign is framed by hedges.

"Isn’t that something?” she says with a smile during her PEOPLE interview, featured in this week's issue. “I’m so lucky.”

While Bates, 76, made headlines recently for saying her buzzy new Matlock reboot is her “last dance” after a five-decade career, she clarifies that she isn’t ready to step away from the industry just yet.

“I think people got confused and thought I was going to retire,” she says. “What I meant was, how can it get any better? I would love for this to keep going.”

Matlock, a twist on the original series that ran from 1986 to 1995 and starred Andy Griffith, gave Bates renewed hope after a period of frustration due to the limited roles being offered to a woman her age.

"I remember calling my agents and saying, ‘I think maybe I want to go into, if not retirement, semi-retirement. If I can’t afford to keep my house, I’ll sell it and maybe go to New York,’” she says. “Then this happened. I couldn’t believe it.”

Everything about the CBS series has been serendipitous for Bates, who plays the title character, Madeline “Matty” Matlock. Over the course of the past seven years, she’s lost 100 lbs.

“It all just coincided beautifully so that physically, I’m capable of doing this show,” she says. “I don’t have to sit down. I can stand up all day long and walk and move and breathe and do so many things that I couldn’t before.”

This period of her life “is just so exciting,” she continues, tears welling up in her eyes. “It’s emotional.”

Born in Memphis, Tenn., to dad Langdon, a mechanical engineer, and Bertye, a homemaker, Bates was “a bit of a drama queen when I was a kid,” she says. She went on to study acting at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“Their theater department became a conservatory, and the whole dream opened up right there,” she says. “But that’s also where the work began.”

After graduation, she moved to New York City and established herself as a stage actor throughout the 1970s, while also booking film and TV roles.

In 1990, when she was 42, Bates made her mainstream breakthrough in Misery, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Her performance as the deranged Annie Wilkes earned her an Oscar.

“The old adage is true: Once you’ve won an Oscar, it’s like, ‘Okay, great job,’ and then they go on to the next,” she says.

Luckily for her, the work kept coming, and roles in films like Fried Green Tomatoes, Dolores Claiborne and Titanic followed.

"I’ve been really lucky to have such a variety of roles over the years,” she says. “I’d always wanted to be a character actor.”

When she was first approached about Matlock, Bates says she "loved the script right away."

"The twist at the end was what got me because when I was reading it at first I thought, 'Oh, this is episodic, and I've done that before,'" she says. "This deeper life is what grabbed me. I thought, 'This means something, there's something to explore here.'"

In the pilot, Matty says a line about women becoming invisible after they hit a certain age, something Bates connected to deeply.

"In fact, I remember having dinner with some friends, and Diane Keaton was there, and she talked about turning 40 and becoming invisible," Bates. "That was the first time I thought about it, because I think I felt invisible to begin with. I think that invisibility can lead to the kind of inner despair. With Matty, I think what's underneath being invisible is feeling that you're not useful anymore to anyone, to the world, to your job."

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"I often think if I didn't do this as a living anymore, I'm sure I would face those days where I felt I haven't paid my dues," she says. "I can't believe I'm 76, and I want the show to run for another five years. I'm going, 'Holy crap! I'll be 81.' 76 and 81 seems 20 years apart to me."

While filming the last episode of Matlock recently, Bates was struck by another of her lines. In the scene, Matty tells her husband she wants to continue working as a lawyer even after they’ve completed their revenge mission against one of the partners at her firm.

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"Matty says, ‘I want to be a lawyer, I love it so much,’” Bates says. “All I could think about was this: ‘We’re about to wrap tomorrow, and it’s bittersweet because I’ve never had an experience like this, like Matty, and I don’t want it to end.’ I love it so much.”