Jennifer Garner Discusses Skin Care and Her Nightly Retinol Eye Cream Routine

Jennifer Garner—queen of our hearts, cool mom, baker extraordinaire and, of course, beloved actress—has some news for you, you might be gaslighting your skin. The 52-year-old knows a thing or two about skin care, she notes she often gets asked what her secret is. Here Garner shares what keeps her looking youthful, what it was like to play Elektra again and her advice to her 30-year-old self.

“I hadn’t played Elektra for 20 years. It was wild. Elektra’s weapons are called sais, and I’ve had my sais from both Elektra and Daredevil kind of just hanging out in their case, in an office, and you forget where they are, and then you come across them and you’re like, ‘oh my gosh, my sais.’ They’re very sharp, so I didn’t want to do anything with them around my kids, especially my son, who became super obsessed with them when he saw them when he was little. I was always trying to hide them from him.

Every now and then I would pull them out, like when we had a playdate over, and there was a little boy who is now in college that was in my eldest daughter’s preschool class, and he thought I was a ninja because I told him I was a ninja. So going back, it had been a long time, you know, it was a lot of hard work and so much fun.

I’ve had the same stunt double since the beginning of my career, and she’s one of my closest friends. So she and I just had a flipping blast together. We would text every day. We worked out together, sometimes in person, sometimes over Zoom. She would come over, and we would just give ourselves drills. And we’re both right-handed, so we’d be like,’ How is lefty today? Lefty sucks,’ you know, just trying to encourage each other to keep going.”

“Besides to wear sunscreen? That’s definitely up there. Although I was pretty on that, you know I’m a goody two shoes in that way. What would I tell my 30-year-old self? Just that things can get messy, but you can handle it. Don’t try to control it. You can’t. There are some things you just have to go with the flow. And to focus, focus, focus on the women in your life.”

“I do. I mean, the thing about sunscreen is that now every season is sun season, and that’s for real because 20, 30 years ago, the sun was simply truly, scientifically, not as strong for all of us as it is now. We used to think about sunscreen when going to the beach, and maybe you think to reapply, whatever, but you get a little tan. It’s all fine. Now we know the sun is much stronger, even in the winter, so you just truly have to make sunscreen part of your everyday habit.

We need a higher SPF than we used to. You used to just be like, ‘Oh, I’m good I’ve got a 15 SPF in the middle of the summer,’ now you have to go higher in the summer. In spring, fall, winter, I use Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry Touch 45, which is great under makeup. It’s not greasy. If you have kids, they won’t balk at it because they don’t feel it on their skin. I wear it even if I’m shooting on a soundstage. My makeup artist puts it on first so that even as I’m walking between sets or suddenly there’s a scene outside I’m protected. You never see it under makeup. It doesn’t make your makeup move. It doesn’t make you greasy at all.”

“If you don’t give yourself the option, you will not be annoyed by it. It’s not something to think about like, ‘Oh, I’ll be inside today.’ You know what? Just put it on. It’s not hurting anything. One of my kids was really balking at it, and I said, ‘Literally, keep some in the shower, and when you’re done drying yourself off, put it on your face before you get out of the shower so you don’t have to worry about it.’ Just make it so it’s such a non-negotiable because that is life. Skin cancer is the most preventable kind of cancer. All you have to do is wear sunscreen.

The really important thing to think about, especially for women your age, is that someday, God willing, you will be 50. You could right now go out and get a burn the next day on your beautiful face and your beautiful skin, like two weeks later, when it’s gone, you will not have any damage. You’ll be like, ‘Oh, good. I didn’t get any sun spots,’ but that’s not true. That is being gaslit by your skin. Because you’re going to get close to 40, and all of that has been sitting under there, and it starts popping up, and it’s so depressing, it’s so sad, and I was pretty good about the sun when I was young, but it still happened to me, and so I am here to tell you, nothing looks better in your 50s than sunscreen in your 20s. You want to just make it a daily habit. It’s like setting your coffee up at night, so that night you is taking care of morning you. You want 20 and 30 year old you to take care of 50 and 60 year old you by just making sunscreen habitual.”

“I’m more serious about using retinol than I was when I was younger because you want that cell turnover, especially in the winter. So every other night, I use my best friend Rapid Wrinkle Repair retinol. I use the serum, and I use the face cream, and then I use the retinol eye products. Then the next day, I use hyaluronic acid, which, of course, is so great because the molecules of the hyaluronic acid hold the moisture in your skin closer to the surface. So it really does plump you up and gets rid of fine lines.

I really toggle back and forth between those two product lines, and they will change your skin. All the time, people talk about my skin, and I’m always like, ‘It’s at your drugstore. It’s Neutrogena.’ My family has used it for three girls since I was seven, and it’s pretty simple. It’s not that expensive. You can do it.

The Rapid Wrinkle Repair Retinol Eye Cream is the best eye cream I’ve ever used. I don’t swap it out with hyaluronic acid. I use it every single night, and it has never once gotten in my eyes and made me tear up. It’s never once caused an issue. I think for 52 it’s done a really good job. I haven’t had anything done, and I think it’s done a very good job of keeping me without too many lines. They are so careful with everything that the put in there. Maybe I started with every other night, but then I just stopped using anything else.”

“I love them both. Nerida, I love because she doesn’t do anything harsh during a facial. She’s been my facialist since 1999 and we’ve never done a peel or laser, because I’m a little bit nervous. I know I’m behind the times probably on that, but she’s just really into clean skin with a great massage. She’s the one who’s really taught me just to keep going with making sure that I do hyaluronic acid and then retinol, that both are needed.

Adir is just the best. We have worked together forever on Virtue and we love how much it changes people’s hair, and it does very much the same thing that Neutrogena does. It changes the actual strand of hair on a really cellular level so that you’re getting the most out of each strand that you can possibly get because the damage is healed in the process.”