Courtesy of Clinique
“Allowing yourself to care less, allows yourself to feel more comfortable in your own skin.”
“I listen to my emotions, I try not to let them run the show,” Emilia Clarke says, “but I’m very attuned to what my brain does now.” Amid the hustle and bustle of Hollywood, it remains clear to the actress that there is more to beauty than the skin deep notions surrounding it.
According to Clarke, approaching beauty from mere aesthetics and “doing simply from the outside in” doesn’t have the same effect as starting from the inside: “seeing what we can say to ourselves and how we can take care of ourselves.” This, to Emilia, is what shines through. “You know it’s like when people get engaged or like, they do an amazing job, or they, you know, get pregnant, whatever it is,” says Emilia, “Like oh my god, you’re glowing, so you’re glowing with happiness.”
Celebrated for her optimism and versatility, Emilia was chosen as Clinique’s first global ambassador in 2020 where she debuted with the skincare house’s iD collection of custom-blended moisturizers. This 2023, the acclaimed actress became the face of the brand’s Protect Your Glow campaign, a movement that not only aims to spotlight the brand’s moisture surge innovations, but also to shed light on the role of self-affirmation and practices in finding beauty in the everyday.
“I think it’s really magical,” she would describe it.
While paradigmatic of both the headstrong Daenerys in Game of Thrones and the cheerful Louisa Clark in Me Before You, the real-life Emilia imparts how one’s glow can be derived even outside one’s self. She divulges how, to her, beauty can also be found in community, in safe spaces, and in healthy practices.
“I’m a big people person,” Emilia says, “so my friends and my family—that’s what makes me feel beautiful. I know that sounds really bonkers,” she says in jest. When the laughter dies down, she says that “they make me feel good. They make me feel attractive. They make me feel supported, loved, and taken care of.”
Beyond support systems, Emilia shares how these very circles have greater implications on one’s idea of beauty as a woman. With a refreshed view, Clarke would express: “I think for me, as a woman, to feel beautiful is just to feel safe and secure. And when I feel safe and secure, then I feel like I can feel beautiful, whereas, if you’re feeling uncertain and you’re feeling unsure, if you feel you’re in an environment where you’re kind of not, you know, you feel uncertain about where you are, that can have a detrimental effect on how you see yourself, I think.”
It is in the same sentiment that Clarke takes “being happy in one’s skin” in a paradox. “Honestly, this is going to sound like it doesn’t make sense with the question, but, what makes me feel best in my own skin is not caring,” the British actress says, “I know it sounds really funny, but genuinely, like, it’s okay!” “Like having a bad hair day? Cool. Having a good hair day? Cool.” The weather can be the best thing in the world, and on other days, it can also be the worst. “And all it is is a state of mind,” as Clarke would put it. In realizing that we can be our own worst judge, the 36-year-old says that “allowing yourself to care less, allows yourself to feel more comfortable in your own skin… And therefore, you’ll look better, because you feel better.”
