All hail Dame Helen Mirren! The actress, Instagram legend and queen of straight talking is once again here to save us all. Speaking at a L’Oréal panel in Cannes, the face of the beauty brand’s ‘Age Perfect’ range declared the moisturiser she was there to promote ‘probably does f— all’.
‘I’m an eternal optimist – I know that when I put my moisturiser on it probably does f— all, but it just makes me feel better. I’ve always said to L’Oreal as well that I will only do what makes me feel better,’ Mirren told the audience.
‘I’m not setting standards for others. All I can do is be who I am. I’ve always loved make-up,’ the star said in the speech reported by Campaign magazine.
Probably not exactly what the top dogs at L’Oreal envisioned for the conference but they must know Mirren is not one to filter herself. She tells it how it is, and that’s why we love here.
The beauty industry is bursting with brands making wild claims about what a lotion or potion can achieve, and often the outcome is far from the promised spiel. And while it’s fair to say many moisturisers do make a difference to the appearance of skin, beauty is often more about the way a product makes you feel as opposed to the physical resultsa product gives.
Mirren, 72, is the oldest of the French brand’s celebrity ambassadors, and has insisted all the imagery of her used to promote their campaigns is not retouched or edited.
At the Cannes conference she also commented on the ridiculous paradox that brands promote anti-ageing products using wrinkle-free models in their teens and early twenties.
‘It used to drive me crazy that the ads promoting skin products were using pictures of 15- and 16-year-old girls. As a 30-year-old, I used to look at that and think, what the f— are you talking about? It was ridiculous. P—– me off majorly. Advertisers are only just coming out of that, and it’s taken them a long time.’
