7 Beauty Tips from Cate Blanchett

When it comes to beauty icons, Hollywood legend Cate Blanchett has long been top of our list thanks to her signature glow. So, you can bet we jumped at the chance to take a look inside Cate's beauty bag, and discover more about her go-to products.

Here, in celebration of Giorgio Armani Beauty's new Sì Eau de Parfum Intense, for which Cate is the face, she talks about her makeup and skincare essentials as well as the positive power of perfume.

1. Focus on inner beauty

"I don’t think you can escape the notion of appearance; even if you try not to discuss it, it’s all around you. But in the environment I grew up in, with my mother and grandmother, it was about the beauty of internal life; your intellectual pursuits and your own evolution rather than beauty as this sort of destination – this island of unattainable perfection.

"I also went to a school where girls were encouraged to try everything. We never, for example, combined our school plays with boys’ schools because our principal was adamant that we’d end up playing the ‘girlfriend’ roles in frivolous musicals that had no good parts for women."

2. Be sun smart

"Living in Australia also meant I was growing up under a massive hole in the ozone layer, so one of the main discussions we had at home in relation to skin was around its health.

"We were living amid the effects of intense heat; my parents knew people who had skin cancer, and its research was very much front and centre of my childhood. From a health rather than a beauty perspective, staying out of the sun was the best piece of advice I was ever given."

3. Eat healthily

"My skin routine is also about what I put into my body. I’m not religious about it, but I’ve always drunk lemon juice in the morning and I take a collagen supplement. I’m careful about what I eat and what I feed my children. I realise I have the luxury of being able to do that, so I would be a fool not to take advantage of it."

4. Have a quick makeup routine down pat

"As far as makeup goes, like most working women I often leave myself until last and run out of time. So if I only have five minutes to get ready (as I often do), I’ll wear a lipstick such as Giorgio Armani Lip Power in a pinky nude shade, Giorgio Armani Eyes To Kill Classico mascara in black, fragrance sprayed liberally, and I’m out the door! Oh, and I also always have Dr Pawpaw lip balm to hand."

5. Understand the importance of fragrance

"What I love about fragrance is that it has nothing to do with this outward expression of so-called beauty; it’s about feelings, it’s about emotions… I’m emotional about fragrance! I don’t want to bang on about it but I have four kids and a very busy life and, like many people (whether you have children or not), am always trying to do a hundred things at once.

"So often, you have no time for this [gestures to her face], but you have to have time for fragrance – particularly this new Giorgio Armani Sì Eau de Parfum Intense, because the vanilla in it (I adore vanilla, always and for ever) brings to mind a warm embrace, which is something I really gravitate towards now.

"It’s not always easy to wake up and jump into the day full of positivity, which is why anything I can do to help lift my mood when I’m not feeling courageous – music, a family meal, a scent – I take. The vanilla also reminds me of a friend I had at university who used to carry a vanilla bean in her handbag, as she’d been told it could alleviate a low mood. Whenever she would be feeling slightly down, she’d pull out the bean and have a sniff of it.

"I like to bring fragrances to my characters; I find it can help me inhabit them. Sometimes you can’t quite unlock something because you’re thinking too logically about it, and finding and spraying a fragrance that you associate with your character allows you to operate on a much more subconscious level; you can create an atmosphere in which things become possible.

6. Embrace ageing

"We talk about beauty with a sense of holding on to a moment in time but it’s also about letting go. Think about a beautiful piece of wood, about how it erodes over time, how the elements change it. When you go against those [natural ebbs and flows] I think it can be counterproductive; it can make us become more rigid."

7. Keep moving

"In its early days, I was wary of the notion of ‘wellness’ – I think it had this sort of navel-gazing quality to it. Now, my sense of wellness is fluid. I think it’s about making your best efforts; about being adaptable and integrating elements of life as much as possible.

"For instance, my husband has always subscribed to the idea that you think better when you’re walking, when you’re moving, when you’re swimming. And conversation is always better when you’re walking, too – such as the conversations that you have with your kids when you wrest them away from whatever screen they’re on to go and actually do something together. I subscribe to that."