Gillian Anderson Swears by This $16 Drugstore Night Cream
The actress and author opens up about her new book and beauty philosophy in an interview with Bazaar
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
Gillian Anderson has a Cannes film in competition, a bestselling book on women's desire, and an L'Oréal Paris ambassadorship. Her skincare routine, however, is almost aggressively low-maintenance — and she'd like you to know that's the point.
According to Harper's Bazaar, the 57-year-old X-Files star and New York Times bestselling author keeps her kit to two things: L'Oréal's Panorama mascara (always black, always in her purse) and the Age Perfect Night Cream, a $16 drugstore staple she tucks into her travel bag in tiny containers. Her morning routine is essentially non-negotiable: no second cleanse, minimal product, maybe the Age Perfect serum if she's feeling generous toward her face. "I don't like a lot of thickness and goopiness," she told the outlet. Same.
The "Worth It" Conversation She Actually Wants to Have
The partnership isn't just about night cream — Anderson makes that clear. She initially bristled at reciting L'Oréal's iconic "because you're worth it" slogan, finding it "a bit cheesy," until she learned the history behind it: advertising copywriter Ilon Specht wrote it as a genuine act of women's self-assertion. That reframe matters to Anderson, whose creative work orbits female desire, shame, and self-worth. Her upcoming September book, More — a follow-up to her 2024 collection Want — compiles anonymous letters from women about their fantasies, and she describes the new submissions as noticeably bolder. The first book built community; this one, she says, reflects the confidence that came from it.
On aging, she's even more direct. The relentless internal noise of her 20s and 30s — the self-judgment, the mental arguments running on loop — is largely gone now, and she credits both time and deliberate work. "Nothing matters so much anymore," she said. "It's much easier to just shrug things off." That's not resignation. For Anderson, it reads as the thing women are rarely promised growing older actually gets to be: quieter, freer, and considerably less interested in performing anxiety.
A $16 drugstore cream and a hard-won sense of self-worth aren't unrelated — they're both about refusing to overcomplicate what you deserve.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
