Hollywood beauty secrets

Feature

Flicking through your celeb mag each week will reveal some shocking bare-faced pictures of celebrities not exactly looking their best. The next week, the same magazine may feature them in all their Hollywood glory.

If celebs can go from minger to goddess in a week, just what are their secrets?

Any honest celebrity will tell you that keeping skin in Hollywood condition is an incredibly time-consuming and costly job. The secret is, without a doubt, money. And lots of it.
Here are some of their top secrets.

1) They get constant spa treatments. Sonya Dakar is Hollywood’s problem skin care expert. Her Hollywood skin-care clinic is the place for celebs with acne, scarring, irritation or aging. At Dakar’s spa, actresses including Denise Richards, Gwyneth Paltrow and Debra Messing get their skin resurfaced, lasered, peeled or massaged on a monthly or sometimes weekly basis.
Cheaper option: Have a look around for at-home facial peels using glycolic acid (AHA). You can buy weak preparations containing 10 per cent glycolic acid through to stronger solutions up to 70 per cent. Caution must be taken when using these, following instructions to the letter and always doing a patch test, but good results can be had. Always choose a reputable brand or pay a little bit more for a salon treatment.

2) Stars spend money on their eyes. Celebrities are constantly going under the knife, getting eye lifts and having the bags removed from under their eyes. They also religiously slather on expensive eye creams.

What celebrities have in common with you is very thin skin around the eyes, which are prone to the first signs of ageing. What the celebrities know is that a little dab of eye cream can prevent and even fix fine lines.

One Hollywood favourite is Klein-Becker’s StriVectin-SD, originally designed to erase stretch marks by regenerating the skin’s healing process. Klein-Becker’s eye cream is widely claimed to improvements the skin’s elasticity, firmness and moisture levels, reducing fine lines and dark circles. Some say that it is even better than botox. StriVectin-SD Eye Cream costs £59.95, available from www.salonskincare.co.uk.

3) They stay out of the sun. Nicole Kidman is famously afraid of the sun and stays out of it at all costs. In fact, many celebrities simply avoid that sun by wearing hats and applying high SPF sunscreen.

4) They cheat with contouring derma fillers. Face lifts make skin look tight, not younger. To restore youthful contours, actresses are getting injections into their checks and jaw line.

5) Their flaws are concealed and airbrushed. Not all celebrities have perfect skin. In fact, celebrities like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Cameron Diaz have famously troubled skin. When you see them caught unawares looking less than perfect, that speaks the truth. When you see them looking fabulously groomed in photoshoots or on the red carpet, they have the benefit of highly skilled makeup artists and airbrush artists.

The notion that nobody is perfect is certainly true, if that makes you feel any better.

Picture caption: Gwyneth Paltrow has her skin resurfaced, lasered, peeled or massaged on a monthly or sometimes weekly basis.