There are some people who age and time seems to just avoid. Jennifer Garner is one of those people. Timelessly gorgeous and always willing to divulge her favorite skin-care and makeup products, Garner is a bit of a beauty guru in her own right. On the heels of her 52 birthday, we’re rounding up some of Garner’s best beauty secrets and skin-care favorites.
Garner’s Beauty Secrets: The Advice we Always Needed
From skin care to wellness, the best of Garner’s beauty secrets always feel like the bathroom vanity advice you’d get from your best girl friend. She’s worked with Neutrogena so long because it works for her, and she’s quick to show you where she likes to put her blush or how she keeps her motivation to work out.
Best of all, it’s all attainable, constructive and easy to implement.
Get Moving
“I do think that being consistent with workouts is a big part of having healthy skin,” Garner told Shape magazine back in 2022. “You’ve got to keep your blood moving.”
Recent studies have shown that Garner’s beauty secret has some serious scientific weight. Weightlifting and cardio workouts were found to improve skin quality more than other exercises, like walking. And in 2015, a study demonstrated that endurance exercises had anti-aging impacts on skin, including improvement of wound healing.
“Man, there’s no time that I feel more like myself, more like I look pretty…” Garner says. “The time I’m going to feel absolutely my best is right after a hard workout and a shower because my skin has a lot of vibrancy.”
Get Sunscreen Serious
This entry into Garner’s beauty secrets is actually from New York dermatologist Doris Day, MD, a NewBeauty Top Doctor.
“Nothing looks better in your 50s than sunscreen in your 20s,” Garner says Dr. Day taught her over a decade ago.
Sun damage is hugely impactful in terms of skin aging, but if you weren’t SPF-inclined in your youth, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Thankfully there are a lot of dermatologist-approved ways to minimize and even eliminate discoloration and skin laxity caused by the sun.
Have Hero Ingredients, Brands and Products
With so many options out there in skin care, you could probably try a new cleanser or retinol every single month for the rest of your life. But is that what’s best for your skin?
For Garner, becoming a Neutrogena partner gave her a consistent, reliable routine that her skin responded to.
“Well, I’m legitimately a Neutrogena aficionado,” Garner says. “I would say probably the key Neutrogena user among my peer group. There are two things that I am a huge believer in because the people in the white lab coats who talk to me tell me, ‘these are the two ingredients that change skin,’—retinol and hyaluronic acid.”
Listen to Your Skin
But, don’t let those ingredients overrule what your skin actually needs.
“I’m not an every-night-retinol person,” Garner explains. “It’s too strong for me and I’ll turn bright red, but I love the effects of it.”
Plenty of people find retinol irritating, and a dermatologist might suggest using retinol products less frequently or using a retinol alternative.
Speedy Self Care
Garner is a busy person. A woman at work, a mom, a jet-setter, Garner does it all. Between travel and motherhood, there’s only so much time in the day. But making time to take care of herself really adds up.
“Sometimes I get really into the whole routine of it and I just really enjoy taking care of myself,” Garner says in her GRWM Vogue video. “But pretty much I’m getting it done as quickly as possible. Any skin care, any self care…it just has to happen and you can’t get fancy about it. Sometimes you just need to get ready or go to bed.”
Bronze Your Neck
After years of working with some of the best makeup artists in the world, Garner has picked up a few things. It’s fair to say that some of Garner’s beauty secrets have their source in the brilliant minds of creatives like hairstylist Adir Abergel or makeup artist Kara Yoshimoto Bua.
“Now, I know the importance of a bronzer,” she says in her Vogue video. “I do a little of this and then I put a little on my hand so it’s all mushed in,” Garner explains while swirling her brush in bronzer.
And Garner’s beauty secret here is to apply bronzer onto your neck. “You gotta do the neck,” she says. “You don’t want to look like a popsicle!”
Love the Age You Are
“I’m super into being in my 50s because there’s such a thing about turning 30,” Garner told NewBeauty in a previous conversation. “Women really feel a clock over their heads at 30, and that goes all the way through your 30s, and at 40, you feel like ‘that’s the end of my youth.’”
Garner found that growing older was freeing, in that sense.
“At 50, there’s a whole new thing where I don’t care about any of that stuff,” she says. “And instead, I’m just owning how powerful my friends are. My girlfriends rule the world. My girlfriends absolutely run the town of Los Angeles. They show up in D.C., they are powerful, they are business owners, they are bosses, they are mentors, and love it. I love just watching my girlfriends thrive.”
Have a Team You Love
When you find someone you love, keep them close. A hairstylist, facialist, dermatologist or nail tech that knows you and your needs is absolutely invaluable. In fact, Garner considers it a regular indulgence.
“Well, I know what I’m due for,” Garner jokes. “I’m due for a day with Nerida [Joy], who’s been my facialist since, I don’t know, ’99, I think? I’m due to see her.”
Everyone Loves a Blush
In her GRWM video, Garner holds up a Stila blush in Peony, joking that she’s not even sure if the product is still being made. And good news, it definitely is.
“I think blush is supposed to go under the end of your eye here,” Garner says, sweeping blush onto the high points of her cheekbones. “And I’m liberal with blush, because why not? It’s my face, party if I want!”
Probably the best advice you’ll ever get about makeup is also one of Garner’s beauty secrets: it’s your face, party if you want.
A Bit of Temperance
We might not like to hear it, but if your skin is especially dull, you may want to look at your alcohol consumption. For Garner, it was the COVID lockdowns that made it clear that she might want to cut back for the sake of her skin.
“After the pandemic when [my friends and I] were all stuck at home, we all realized that we look better if we are not drinking,” she says. “And that was really like, ‘Uh, oh no, I wish that weren’t true.’ But the more we talked about it amongst ourselves, the more we talked to each other, the more we were like, ‘Oh no, it’s really true.’ So, all of my girlfriends, we’ve all cut way back on drinking and that’s a big thing.”
Stay Accountable to Someone
If you’re someone that finds it tough to get into the gym, you’re not alone.
For Garner, it meant resorting to some old-school tactics, like laying out her workout clothes the night before and making sure she had a gym buddy to keep her accountable. She explains that the drive not to disappoint someone works like a hack to get her in the gym.
“I have buddies that I’m accountable to and I have coffee ready to go,” Garner explains. “That’s what it is. It doesn’t feel good if you’ve told your friends you’ll work out with them, and then they all work out without you or they miss it because you don’t show up. Those things don’t feel good. So it’s like a hack to make yourself accountable to someone that you say you’re going to work out with.”
Garner’s Beauty Secrets Summed Up
For Jennifer Garner, beauty is about taking care of yourself. Making time for the simple, small ways you can support your skin and finding ways to trick yourself into the gym more often are all about trying to stay healthy and motivated.
Rather than obsessing over the latest TikTok hack or trend, Garner’s beauty secrets have remained largely consistent over the last decade. That because she found what works for her skin and stuck to it.