If there’s one skincare step Ana de Armas lives by, it’s surprisingly not a product but a technique: facial massage. Speaking on the phone, we quizzed the Cuban-Spanish actor to name only three skincare steps she could never go without (a question she found difficult to  answer). 

“It’s hard because if it’s only three steps I am going to have to choose between my facial massage with a cream or to add a serum in there!” she thought out loud. Then, finally: “The three most important steps for me would be removing my makeup, then I think I’ll go with the massage—I think even if I only put a [moisturising] cream with it and I use my rose quartz to massage it in, I feel like it’s going to penetrate better and be a self-care moment too.” 

The exact cream in question is Estée Lauder’s newly relaunched Revitalizing Supreme+ Upgrade Youth Power Creme, a clever suggestion by De Armas because it’s really much more than your average moisturiser (we’d expect nothing less from the brand’s Global Brand Ambassador though). “What I love about the Supreme+ Creme, especially about this new upgraded formula, is it feels like a multitasking creme,” she tells us. “You put it on your skin and you know it’s going to lift, it’s going to hydrate, it’s going to give you that boost of collagen and you’re going to wake up the next morning glowing.” 

The Knives Out actor, who recently starred in the latest Bond movie, has a pretty simple beauty routine with a self-care focus. “I’m a night person,” says the 33-year-old. “At night, I feel not only more awake, which is strange, but also more creative.”

“It’s when I like to read my scripts, and when I like to study my lines, and I like to watch good films… I feel like that’s the time of the day when there’s less chaos around me and I can focus more on what I’m doing. Also that goes for self-care too because it’s the time I take my hot bath, and I chill and I pick my music; that’s when I enter my creative moment.”

After a cleansing bath (and with a cleansed face) De Armas applies her Advanced Night Repair serum (“which I love!”) followed by the new Revitalizing Supreme+ Upgrade Youth Power Creme and then she’s ready to take her rose quartz gua sha tool for that facial massage before retiring to bed. 

This and other self-care rituals were her New Year’s Resolutions for 2022: “Just to try to take back my space. I have a lot of work and things to do this year and I feel like I will have to find those moments of setting boundaries and say, ‘This time is for me.’ I need to protect that time to replenish myself and rest and get strong for what’s next.”

Just as long as it takes place in the evenings. “Mornings? No! No mornings for me!”