Courteney Cox Reveals the Skincare Tip She Swears by for Smooth, Radiant Skin at 57
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Courteney Cox, 57, shared the skincare tip she wishes she followed in her 20s.
The actress swears by post-shower dry brushing to exfoliate and boost circulation.
“You’ve just got to remember to take care of your body at a young age, because you can’t start at 50,” she said.
In many cases, when you ask someone to share a skincare tip they wish they followed sooner, the go-to answers include sunscreen or retinol. (And for good reason—they’re both crucial products that, when used consistently, keep skin looking its best.) But Courteney Cox’s response to that question is a bit unexpected. Her secret weapon, instead, is dry brushing.
“You’ve just got to remember to take care of your body at a young age, because you can’t start at 50,” the actress, 57, recently told InStyle. “It’s easy to use Retin-A or whatever and keep your face going. But there are only so many dry brushes you can use.”
After every shower, Cox goes straight into an admittedly intense dry brushing routine. “And I don’t mean the kind for lymphatic drainage, where you're lightly brushing towards your heart, or whatever,” she explained. “I don’t give a sh*t about that. I’m talking like the stiffest, hardest brush. I just scrub up and down, to get the circulation going.”
If you’ve never heard of this technique, it’s basically a form of physical exfoliation that scrubs away dead skin cells while simultaneously boosting blood flow and circulation, which some claim may help decrease and prevent cellulite—but more research is warranted on that front.
After giving herself a good full-body massage, Cox slathers her skin in Augustinus Bader’s The Rich Body Cream and follows up with a body oil. “Someone said it’s called ‘slugging’? I don’t know—I just put the oil on top of the cream because I think it locks it in,” she said.
The plus side to dry brushing is, compared to pricey serums and creams, it’s relatively affordable—all you need is a stiff-bristled body brush. However, dermatologists advise that if you do try it, maybe don’t approach it with Cox-level vigor, especially if you have sensitive skin.
“Less is more,” Heidi A. Waldorf, M.D., a clinical associate professor of dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine of Mount Sinai in New York previously told Prevention. “Go for shorter periods, minimal pressure, and no more than once a week.” Like the Friends star, Waldorf says to always follow up with moisturizer, as over-exfoliation can lead to dryness.
In addition to her skincare routine, Cox has experimented with cosmetic fillers and procedures in the past. But she recently admitted that her overuse of them made her look “really strange.”
“There was a time when you go, ‘Oh, I’m changing. I’m looking older.’ And I tried to chase that (youthfulness) for years,” she told The Sunday Times in February. “And I didn’t realize that … I’m actually looking really strange with injections and doing stuff to my face that I would never do now.”
Instead, she’ll stick to dry brushing.
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