Beauty icon Demi Moore has not been afraid to change up her hair for her famous roles.

From her perfectly crimped 80s ‘do in St. Elmo’s Fire to her pixie cut in 1990’s Ghost (not to mention her shaved head for G.I. Jane in 1997), Moore, who graces the cover of PEOPLE’s World’s Most Beautiful issue has now settled into her long brunette locks. “I have grown quite attached to my hair,” she tells the magazine in this week’s cover story. “From a certain point of having had no hair.”

Looking back, Moore, 62, who has three daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, with ex Bruce Willis recalls being cast in Ghost while she had long hair and cutting it—unbeknownst to the director—before filming began. “I was a first-time mother and went on a vacation to Paris. And I’d been carrying around a picture in my wallet of Isabella Rossellini with this gorgeous short haircut for years, waiting for the opportunity,” she recalls.

“I don’t know if it was hormonal post-pregnancy, but I literally walked down the corner, from where we were staying in Paris, speaking no French, pulled out this picture and said [to a stylist], ‘Can I have this?'”

The Substance star allows there might have been “some serious panic” on set, but in the end, “they really did come around to see it,” she says. “I was an artist, a ceramicist and it kind of fit. It wasn’t an intentional thing to shock them. I think I really just needed a change.”

For more of Moore’s exclusive interview and photos, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.

While growing out her pixie, Moore dyed her hair blonde for The Butcher’s Wife in 1991. “It was a very fun time to have blond hair,” she says. “I think on that path of trying to figure out who you are, what works, what doesn’t work, it’s this great time of experimenting and discovery. What I did realize very quickly is that dyeing your own hair blond trashes it. That’s what I found it. But it was fun while I had it.”

When she buzzed off all of her hair to portray Lieutenant Jordan O’Neill in G.I. Jane, her daughters even wanted to look just like mom—to a degree. “They didn’t want to shave their head, but they wanted to have short haircuts to be like me,” she says.

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Now having rocked her signature long hair for years, Moore admits she isn’t sure if she could chop it all off again. “I don’t know, I feel fairly connected to my hair in a different kind of way,” she explains. “There’s energy in hair, you know? But I never like to say never.”

One thing she would readily embrace is the silver fox look late in life. “Oh 100%. I look at women who have that incredible gray, especially long, and I think it’s striking,” she says. “I would definitely do it. I just don’t have enough to make it interesting. Mine’s like a smattering that makes my hair look murky. I didn’t really start coloring my hair until I was, like, 55.”

Still, “it’s more than it used to be,” she says, laughing. “But, you know, my great grandmother on my mom’s side never had any gray—and she never cut her hair.”