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From Woman's Day

You’ve heard the saying, “with age comes wisdom,” but if you ask Viola Davis, with age comes an amped up beauty routine. In recent years, the 54-year-old actress has let us mere mortals in on the revamp her skincare’s undergone. “I’m completely into everything from undereye moisturizer to all shades of lipstick, which is surprising because I never used any products in my twenties,” Viola told InStyle recrently. “I feel more girlish and buoyant in my fifties than I ever have before.” And she’s sure has hell not letting this new drive go to waste, in fact, she’s embracing it in more ways than one. Here are her top beauty secrets:

1. She doesn’t sleep on steaming.

When asked by Hello Beautiful about her skincare routine, Viola was quick to credit steaming saying, "I love steaming. We just bought a new house with a steam shower,” she said. Steam has the power to open up pores, flush out impurities, and "makes the skin much more receptive to products you put on your face afterward, enhancing their effect," Jeanette Jacknin, MD, a dermatologist in San Diego, previously told Women’s Health.

2. Vaseline is a staple.

Despite the dewy look Viola sports in, oh, just about every Instagram post and red-carpet appearance, she reveals it doesn’t happen without some help. For her lifelong struggle with dry skin, she’s turned to drugstore hero: Vaseline. Disclaimer: She's a spokesperson for the brand, but even before she was, she used it growing up because “it was affordable, it was readily available, and it worked wonders, most importantly,” she told Yahoo! Lifestyle. “I still use it to this day on my daughter and on the bottom of my feet. It’s a go-to product,” she adds.



3. She’s all about an acid peel.

Post-steamy shower, Viola will occasionally stimulate collagen and skin-cell growth with a peel. “Kinara [renamed Olga Lorencin Skin Care] has a red-carpet facial kit that includes an acid peel and it completely smooths out my skin,” she told New Beauty. Once it’s on, she can bank on a “smoother canvas for makeup, and a dewy glow that doesn’t wash off,” Women’s Health previously reported. Plus, peels knock out a few layers of skin and so they pave the way for the oil Viola told Yahoo! Lifestyle she loves to apply, to penetrate the skin.

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4. She prioritizes sleep.

And the reason she’s put it at the top of her to-do list is because it’s the “Number one thing that helps [her] skin,” according to Yahoo! Lifestyle. While a full night of shut-eye isn't a given, what with her being the star How To Get Away With Murder and the time-consuming task that is sweeping up all the Oscars, Emmys, and Golden Globes for her film roles, Viola says, “I go to sleep earlier at night" and "I’m asking for more time off which has helped me exponentially.”



5. She believes in the power of a body scrub.

“My name is Viola Davis and I am a product junkie,” the actress admitted to Yahoo! Lifestyle. And yet, even despite that fact, she's been able to narrow her favorite scrubs down to a few go-tos including Brown Sugar Scrub by Fresh and GlamGlow products. “Oh, but my favorite, favorite, favorite—I think it’s an emotional experience—is the Ginger Eucalyptus [Body Polisher] by Molton Brown. I use that on my skin,” she revealed to Yahoo! Lifestyle.

6. She doesn’t forget to hydrate.

Viola is officially on that long list of celebs who credits water for her flawless skin. “Drinking more water,” she told Yahoo! Lifestyle, “is instrumental.” But Viola isn’t chugging just any old tap water, she’s downing Alkaline water. Or, at least she tries to “drink it all the time,” she told New Beauty. And it's a good thing since, according to the pros who’ve spoken to Women’s Health on the topic, water (tap, bottled, or Alkaline) helps skin look plumper and evens out the amount of oil in your skin which helps show pesky blemishes the door.

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