Lynda Carter Reveals the 2 Things She Uses for Her Surprisingly Simple Skincare Routine at 75
At 75, Lynda Carter proves that a timeless beauty routine doesn’t have to cost a fortune.
At 75, Lynda Carter has stripped her entire skincare routine down to two ingredients, soap and water, and said so bluntly on a recent red carpet. Her lineup, shaped by her mother and tested across five decades on camera, is a bargain hunter’s dream. Almost everything she reaches for is sold at any drugstore for a few dollars.
What’s happening in the celebrity beauty world
“My skin care is honestly and truly soap and water. Just a clear soap and water. Clear soap! Just a clear soap and water,” Carter said in an October 2026 red carpet clip shared by Hello! Magazine via Instagram.
The Wonder Woman star, who received a Paley Center for Media Honors Award in May 2025, has stuck with the same philosophy for years. She used Purpose soap (a decades-old drugstore face bar) for most of her career. For body care, she reaches for Bronnley Lemon & Neroli Soap, which she described to The Strategist as “a fresh, very lemony scent that doesn’t smell artificial.”
Carter has also been direct about skipping cosmetic procedures, the single biggest line item in most anti-aging budgets. “I don’t cut my face, so I probably look just myself, but older,” she told People in March 2024. “The reason I’ve never had any facial surgery is just because I’m afraid. It’s scary, because we’ve all seen some bad ones.”
Why the shift to simpler makeup routines is happening
Carter credits her mother for the foundation of her routine, specifically decades-early sun-avoidance habits that cost almost nothing.
“She was so ahead of her time. She said, ‘Do not go out in the sun. If you do, you’ll end up like a prune or an old leather purse,’” Carter told W Magazine. “At the time, there was no sun protection, so she’d wear hats and put cream on her face. And she used to give herself a facial with egg whites. She had no wrinkles on her face, and her hands were always soft.”
Carter adopted the same discipline and expanded it with inexpensive drugstore picks. She uses Coppertone For Faces Only on her hands while driving, and because she rows on the Potomac River, she wears athletic wear with built-in sun protection from brands such as Coolie.
She has also pushed back on the idea that celebrity faces are the product of secret high-end skincare. “Actors and celebrities always look so great when they’re on the red carpet, but when you see them in real life, they just look like a regular person with no makeup and their crummy clothes on,” she told People. “If everyone did a three-hour makeover before they left the house, then they’d all look amazing. What I’m trying to say is, there’s a lot of effort behind those pictures.”
What could be next for celebrity skin rituals
Carter’s framework points to three directional shifts worth watching, and each one translates into a concrete decision for anyone trying to spend less on beauty.
Sun protection moves from a step to the whole routine. Carter’s system is built around prevention rather than correction, and the central tools (sunscreen plus physical barriers like hats and UPF clothing) are inexpensive and widely available. Readers can act on this today by auditing their own daily sun exposure (the drive to work, the walk to the mailbox, the garden hour) and layering in SPF-rated clothing or a dedicated facial sunscreen before dropping money on a new serum.
Drugstore staples get a second life among women 50 and over. Carter has stuck with Maybelline Great Lash Mascara, the pink-and-green tube sold at every drugstore, for her entire career. “It’s still the best one on the market. The pink and green. It’s a classic formula, and it always works,” she told The Strategist. For readers rethinking a bloated beauty shelf, this is permission to downsize. One proven inexpensive mascara and one trusted bar of soap can replace a drawer of products that cost ten times more.
Technique starts to beat SKU count. Carter’s lipstick trick (“put one coat on, then rub it in with your finger, and then put a second coat on”) is the kind of two-second habit that outperforms a new tube. Expect more mature-focused beauty content to shift toward application technique over new launches. The money move for readers is to master a few techniques (a lipstick blot, a mascara layering method, a sunscreen reapplication cadence) before buying anything else.
The through-line of Carter’s philosophy is restraint. Fewer products, more protection and a refusal to chase correction.
THREE SIGNALS TO WATCH
1. More celebrities over 70 publicly naming a two or three-step routine on red carpets, as Carter did with Hello! Magazine
2. Growth in UPF-rated athletic wear brands such as Coolie entering mainstream retail
3. Renewed visibility for drugstore classics like Maybelline Great Lash and Purpose soap in beauty coverage aimed at women 50 and over
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