Cate The Great Beauty Post

Cate Blanchett is renowned for her brilliant performances—her leading role in Blue Jasmine earned her nominations for a SAG Award and a Golden Globe this week, and will in all likelihood also garner her an Oscar nod, a statue she took home in 2005 for The Aviator. But bring up her name in a roomful of women, and the one thing that always comes up is her lit-from-within skin. Blanchett attributes her flawless complexion to SK-II, for which she is a global ambassador, and its star ingredient, Pitera (an amino-acid-, mineral-, and vitamin-rich yeast from Japan). Her visage is so flawless, in fact, that she was willing to go au naturel for the last scene in Blue Jasmine."I wanted Jasmine to be utterly unmasked, without wearing a scrap of makeup," she said.

But that isn't the only beauty risk she's taken for the silver screen: In Elizabeth: The Golden Age, she bleached her strands, brows, and lashes, and even shaved her hairline. "The hair shaving was a bit brutal because it grows back like pubic hair—I wore a lot of headbands," she told us. In terms of bringing a part to life, one could say that Blanchett goes Method, at least in terms of beauty. But at home as the mother of three boys and on the red carpet, she keeps things simple and drama-free. "I suppose when you're wearing couture the tendency would be to match the dress with a lot of makeup, but I think it's much more modern to be barefaced," she explained. Here, Blanchett shares her solution for sleep-deprived eyes (a drawback of the job of an internationally famous movie star) and how to convince a man to moisturize.