The secret behind Rachael Taylor’s amazing skin

From her humble upbringing in Tasmania to her roles in Transformers, Grey’s Anatomy, and, more recently, Netflix’s Jessica Jones, Rachel Taylor has come a long way, making her the perfect ambassador for Neutrogena and its See What’s Possible campaign. 

Beauty Crew sat down with the down-to-earth star to chat all things skin care, beauty hacks (her secret to amazing hair is an interesting one!), and what it means to be an ambassador for Neutrogena. 

On becoming the new face Neutrogena
“I have a little bit of a history with [Neutrogena], because I actually had quite tricky skin as a teenager and my mum, bless her heart, took me to a dermatologist who recommended the Oil-Free Acne Wash for me and I saw a little improvement, which was lovely. 

Now, there’s such a lovely alignment between the things that I care about in my life. The first being skin care that actually delivers real results and has some scientific innovation behind it, and also the See What’s Possible campaign has this lovely message of empowering women to put their best face forward, as they say, and achieve their dreams and that’s something that I really care about – about framing female positive stories in a way that’s optimistic, and about encouraging women to go out and get what they want out of life. I think it’s a beautiful message.” 

On how she keeps her skin in perfect condition
“I actually like to keep it quite simple. I have moved around on the spectrum of how much I like to fiddle with my skin, all the way through to laziness, and I’ve found that using the least amount of products is best for me. Right now I’m doing quite a bit of training for Jessica Jones and I train in a gym that’s just kind of laden with boy germs, so in the morning I use the Deep Clean Micellar Gel to Foam, the dry skin one, and then I chase it with the Ultra Sheer Fluid Sunscreen SPF50. Because I grew up in Tasmania, my mother and father drilled sun protection into me when I was a kid, which I’m very grateful for. So mostly during the day I’m just wearing sunscreen. And then in the evening, I’m just about using a beautiful oil-based products.” 

On always have a good skin care routine
“Yeah, I got that from my mother. I thank her now, but when I was growing up she told me two things. One, which is wash your face before you go to bed. That was absolutely mandatory and I’m very grateful for that now. And the second one is don’t overpluck your eyebrows. She never allowed me to do that and that is also something that I’m very grateful for.” 

On her off-duty beauty look
“Sunscreen and concealer for me. Personally I prefer just a straight sunscreen and using a little bit of concealer. I use Cle de Peau for concealing under-eye circles, and I use Sensai concealer for everywhere else. If it’s in my daily life I don’t use a foundation. I just use the Ultra Sheer Fluid Sunscreen and the Sensai corrector pen. I use a little eyebrow gel and eyebrow pencil, and the Chantecaille mascara I really like because it’s got some peptides in there. And that’s about it in terms of my daily routine.”

On the beauty products you’d find in her handbag
“You know I have a little bottle of avocado oil and I put it on the ends of my hair because I have very processed, blonde, colour-treated hair and I noticed that that is the oil of all of the oils. The Neutrogena Norwegian Hand Cream is THE hand cream product. Because I’m quite prone to dry little fingers as you can probably see. Also in my handbag is my favourite lipstick. It’s a Coco Chanel lipstick; it’s a really good [nude-pink] colour. The Cle de Peau foundation and this Ultra Sheer Fluid Sunscreen, which is great particularly when I’m out and about. 

On her worst beauty habit
“I am not immune to somehow having a little pick at my fingernails. And I can be a little bit fingernail-picky and a bit fingernail-bitey. I have a good skin care process in place, but when it comes to my fingers I can tell that I’ve got a little habit with nervous picking, which I’m trying to hide under the table.” 

On the haircut she’s dying to have
“If I wasn’t playing [Trish Walker], I would probably have really short hair - bob short. My character on Jessica Jones, Trish Walker, has long hair, so it can be quite fussy to have to put extensions in every day, but I really loved having short hair. It’s just that jaw length I really found easy because I’m quite low maintenance in general and I feel like with having short hair I never had to touch it.” 

On her favourite red carpet beauty look
“Yeah there was one in particular. It was at the Emmys in 2012, I think. And I had a really short little haircut, which I really enjoyed. I felt like I had a great hair cut. A great makeup moment with a makeup artist, who’s my friend. We had such a good time getting ready. And I really felt like everything was just rocking that day. I loved that beauty moment.”

And on her worst
“There were some bad orange spray tan moments, which I’m ashamed of. I wish that I could scrub those from my beauty record. When I first got to L.A., I think there were a couple of bad orange spray tan moments. Now I could never imagine anyone convincing me to stand like I’m being strip-searched and have hideous orange spray sprayed all over my body.” 

On the best beauty advice she’s ever been given
“Wash your face. I’m serious! I’m not just stoking that for the purposes of Neutrogena. Wash your face, because if you’re going to allow makeup to build up on your skin, you’re going to start clogging your pores and causing breakouts then you’re going to need more makeup and it creates a vicious cycle. So what I do is when I finish the day’s work, I take my makeup off and then in the car home I just let it breathe.”

Images: Getty