The Young and The Restless star Amelia Heinle got to swim in the beautiful Mediterranean thanks to the Monte Carlo TV Festival. Heinle, 50, shared a video of herself wearing a dark red swimsuit and getting ready to get into the cold ocean waters. “Thanks so much to all the fans and TF1 and the television festival for allowing me to swim in the Mediterranean again!!” she captioned the post. Heinle has been acting for decades—here’s how she’s 50 and thriving.

Heinle has been horseback riding since her parents got her a Shetland pony. “I was interested in sports, but I loved horses,” she says. “I don’t know how my parents swung it. Sandy wasn’t the nicest pony; she stepped on my feet all the time and threw me off a lot. But it was a good learning experience… We used to ride like crazy when we were kids—bareback, no helmets, just crazy stuff.”

Heinle got back into horseback riding and dressage after her daughter expressed an interest in it. She now rides a horse called Prince Caspian. “I knew about dressage, but I was an adrenaline junkie—I loved jumping,” she says. “But dressage is exciting in a different way. It’s a rush when he goes from this beautiful walk to a canter. He’s a big mover, but it’s like liquid. I’m just getting to know him. He’s a little shy, still trying to figure it all out because he’s new to the barn. I sing country-western songs to calm him down.”

Heinle knows she will always be connected to the role of Victoria Newman. “It scares me to think, like, I never thought I would be in a place so long,” she says. “Not that it’s gonna end anytime soon, but if it were, like this has become such a part of my life and the people I see on day-to-day basis is like…. This is like a legacy for me almost. I’ll be known for his, for being on Y&R because I’ve been there so long.”

Heinle admits to having her fair share of beauty disasters over the years. “I over tweezed my eyebrows in the late ’90s,” she says. “Also, when I dyed my hair too blonde during the Victoria and Brad days. One of the producers said I looked like I was going to Woodstock instead of running Newman Enterprises. And when I got bangs, Joshua Morrow [Nick], who never says a bad thing about anyone, said, ‘It’s not the best look I’ve seen on you.'”

Heinle starts work before 7 and often isn’t home until late in the day. “I might get lucky and be able to go to work, ride and get home when my kids get home from school,” she says, adding that her love of horseback riding helps with her job. “I know when I’m doing a scene exactly how I want it to go. It took this long to finally get here. That’s not to say I don’t have crappy days where it looks awful and my acting is worse than I’ve ever seen it or days when I think, ‘Why the heck am I even on camera?’ If that is what dressage is like, I’m ready—I’m prepared to fail miserably in the beginning and just enjoy it. Whether it’s riding a horse or acting on a soap opera, if you’re enjoying what you’re doing, none of the other stuff really matters.”