Jennifer Garner’s Beauty Advice Warns Against Excess Mirror Time & Fillers

Even though Jennifer Garner’s daughters are still teenagers, she already knows the beauty advice she’ll give them someday. “My advice is to look at the mirror less and be cautious when it comes to injecting anything into your face,” the mom to Violet, 16, Seraphina, 13, and 10-year-old son Samuel (with ex Ben Affleck), told Harper’s Bazaar in an interview published on July 27. “Be very, very incredibly judicious and wait as absolutely long as possible to add anything. Don’t think that you’re 37 and you need to be shooting up your face.”

Adding that you “don’t need to wear so much makeup or have such a constant blowout,” the Adam Project actor emphasized the importance of her longstanding out-of-sight, out-of-mind strategy. “Obsess less, and look at the rest of the world to see what you could be using your time for instead,” she offered. “We all look at our faces more than people used to, and it doesn’t do you any good. You obsess over changes or how to fix something on your face.”

That’s not to say she doesn’t have a hair and makeup routine, but her emphasis remains on self-care. “If you take care of your skin and hair,” she told the magazine, “then you should feel good without adding anything major.” So even if she might “need more mascara or to give [her] roots a little help,” it’s not a necessity because she knows her “skin and hair are as strong as ever.”

That type of sage advice is something Garner’s more than 13.4 million Instagram followers have come to expect. Leading up to her 50th birthday in April, the Golden Globe winner started a “50 before 50” series in her stories, for example, which is still viewable in a highlights folder. Among the collection of tips, acts of kindness, and random things and people that make her happy is a couple pieces of “wisdom” that her own mother, Patricia Garner, has given her over the years. In one slide, she explained how “happiness is your own responsibility,” writing, “The life you’re living while you wait for the grade, the college, the job, the man, is your actual life. Decide to enjoy it and work toward your own peace and contentment.”

Attaching a childhood photo of herself sporting a wide grin (and a couple missing teeth) the next day, she also shared her mom’s advice to “look for opportunities to catch a stranger’s eye and smile at them.” The reason? “You’ll be a happier, healthier person.”

That’s all to say she certainly wasn’t dreading the Big 5-0 or the concept of aging in general. “I’m excited. I like it. Why not?” Garner said during a March appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “I don’t know why I’m surprised that I’m turning 50, but I do have the sense of ‘What the heck, it’s really here?’ I don’t know, I like the idea that all of a sudden I’m allowing myself to believe that I know what I know. It’s empowering.”

And whether it’s about injectables or self-care in general, she seems more than happy to share that knowledge with others, too.