THE BEAUTY BREAKDOWN

How does the L’oréal Paris spokesmodel manage to still look a million bucks despite thrashing around in the water all day? With a hairdresser close by, and a lot of sunscreen…

“I love the effect of sea water on my hair,” Lively confesses, though you have to wonder how much a person can really, truly love salt water when you have to spend an entire day in it… then multiply that by the number of days it actually took to shoot The Shallows. Turns out there was no respite from the H 0 for the 28-year-old, who also floated in a tank filled with chlorinated water for technical scenes (any blonde knows that’s a straight-up nightmare on hair). But when you’re Blake Lively, and your hair is (we like to imagine) insured for more than David Beckham’s legs, you have a stylist close by to rehydrate parched strands with hair oil.

The glow, however, the kind only Australia’s UV index can provide, is all-natural despite having long wrapped shooting when we meet. “You wouldn’t believe me; locationshooting in Australia ended in December, but I have managed to keep my colour.” She slip-slopslapped with high-spf sunscreen religiously to avoid the burn.

Her beauty look on- and off-screen is glowy and golden, but Lively has a few tricks up her sleeve, too. She laughs recalling a story of her mother, a former talent scout, displaying beauty ingenuity on a photoshoot. “[The makeup artist] happened to forget his kit. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a box of pink Advil tablets, licked one or two and then rubbed it on her cheeks with her finger!” We suspect having played muse to L’oréal Paris for almost three years now, the actress will pass on less off-the-cuff beauty tips to her own daughter (whose current obsession, Lively tells us, is makeup brushes). But we know one thing for sure: the kid, like her mother, will have phenomenal hair.