Kate Beckinsale isn’t age-obsessed.
The 48-year-old actress recently told People that she doesn’t “actually think about [aging] that much,” despite frequently fielding questions about her age.
“I think other people seem to be very obsessed with aging in a way that I am not,” she explained. “I am asked about that a lot. The minute I turned 31, press-wise, they’d say, ‘Heading towards 40.’ And you just go, ‘Pardon?’ nobody said that to me when I was 10 and I was almost 20.”
The “Underworld” star added that “it’s possible for people to create 40 as a real terrifying moment,” which made being 39 “much harder.”
“I’m in a much happier situation in my forties than I was in my thirties,” she added. “But I don’t actually think about it that much. I think about it because people ask me about it, but I don’t think I would [otherwise].”
She continued, “Things haven’t started to fall off yet and I haven’t had crazy hormone changes…I’m sure that will make me think about it much more, but at the moment nothing feels wildly different than it has for a while.”
Beckinsale is no stranger to responding to ageist criticism, having once clapped back at a troll who said she was “too old” for bikini photos. She’s also shut down plastic surgery speculation, previously saying she gets “pissed off” when people assume she’s had Botox. Instead, she partially thanks good genetics – and fear of getting a “mustache” – for her age-defying skin.
“I’m really lucky, my mum’s got really good skin,” Beckinsale said, adding that being serious about sunscreen also helped.
“I was paranoid that I would get freckles in a mustache formation on my face,” she recalled of childhood vacations. “So I was wearing Factor 70 [SPF]. I just didn’t want a mustache, that’s really why I used sunscreen.”
But it’s not just sunscreen she swears by these days; she recently became a spokesperson for MRVL’s Skin Solutions, a brand that uses a peptide derived from scorpion venom.
“There’s no other products that have this particular peptide.” Beckinsale told the outlet of the brand’s anti-aging range. “I was incredibly concerned [at first], ‘Okay there’s something from a scorpion. Like, what the f—k have we done to the scorpion?’ That was my first concern, we’re not crushing up a scorpion? No. It’s all very careful and gentle and it’s hand-milking. I can’t imagine milking a scorpion, but here we are.”
Not all of her beauty secrets involve milking scorpions however, as she also told the outlet that Cetaphil soap, Pantene shampoo and conditioner and cherry and strawberry Chapstick — which she calls her “absolute jam” — are all staples in her beauty arsenal.
And while she may not spend much time thinking about her age, she does recognize that being a skincare spokesperson has become “slightly more interesting” to her over time.
“Of course you’re going to have great skin when you’re 19 years old,” she said. “I think people are slightly more interested in ‘How do you not turn into a walnut overnight?'”