When actor Joey King confides that there's pretty much nothing she wouldn't try in the name of beauty within the first five minutes of our interview, I knew we were in for a good time. “I really can't think of anything,” she muses. “I'm like, would I shave off my eyebrows? No. But, actually, now I think of it, I'm like: sure why not? I'm kind of game for anything.”
Despite our Zoom call being a brief 15 minutes, Joey radiates open, girl-next-door vibes from the get go. Relaxed, self-assured and ready to roll with life and have a laugh while she's at it, she might be our new favourite beauty bestie – although we'd have to share the honour with her IRL bff, Sabrina Carpenter. The pair share one of the most wholesome female friendships in Hollywood, along with a wicked sense of humour. When Joey got engaged to her now-husband, director Steven Piet, Sabrina lamented: “still getting used to our open relationship but really happy for you guys.” Meanwhile, in an interview with Vanity Fair, Joey joked, “I don't even know who that is?”
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It might be one of the reasons cosmetics brand, Elf, tapped up the actress for its latest lols ad. With her dry wit, she follows in the footsteps of Jennifer Coolidge's iconic baby dolphin impression. “They killed it with that one,” Joey laughs of her predecessor. Newly repping the brand's Power Grip Primer, Joey's ad campaign – with Lucien Laviscount from Emily in Paris – shows her “meeting the parents” with a quirky little twist. “It was so fun,” she says of the process. “It really didn't feel like I was at work.”
The collaboration was a natural fit for Joey, who coyly admits her beauty stash is overflowing. “I have so much makeup. I’ve just accumulated so much over the years,” she winces, before countering that she's big on spreading the joy. “I share with my sisters and nieces and we kind of trade back and forth,” she nods. Which brings us back to the big topic of beauty: the biggest risks she's taken, the TMI body-hair fail she won't be repeating and the signature perfume she's accidentally gatekeeping.
So without further ado, here's what Joey King told us when she sat down with GLAMOUR…
I kind of do anything and everything. I've dyed my hair so many times, I've done so many different makeup looks. I really loved shaving my head. I couldn't hide behind my hair to feel pretty, so I was able to kind of experiment more with makeup looks that made me feel bolder or beautiful. I really, really enjoyed that because I kind of just had my face as my canvas.
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I've done a lot of things in the name of beauty but getting a wax is probably the worst thing I've ever done in my life. I'll never do it again. I’m like ‘why are we doing this?' This is horrible.
I'm obviously addicted to (slash can't do my makeup without) the Elf Power Grip Primer. It's my go-to, because no matter what I'm wearing, I need it to stay all day, so that's that. My other go-to that I'm loving right now, is Pout Clout, the lip plumping pen. I love a little tingle on my lips and I also love the colours that they come in, my favourite is Toasted.
I was shopping in Japan and I came across this perfume from a company called Pan Seven. It's a Taiwanese brand and the scent is called Hunter, but when I went to order more on their website, the whole site is in Mandarin. Luckily I have a wonderful friend who's actually from Taiwan and speaks Mandarin, so she helps me order four or five at a time because I don't know how to use their site. That's my signature scent, which is so funny. I have to go through a lot of work to get it, but I've tried to find other things like it in the US and I can't. I personally like something that airs on the side of masculine. It's a little bit masculine, a little bit feminine, it's a bit woodsy. That's my go-to scent for candles as well, but yeah, for perfume, I like a little bit of an androgynous scent.
I used to do a full face of makeup everyday and I realised that, as much as I love doing that, it takes a long time. I don't wear makeup everyday anymore – I don't really leave the house as much as I used to. I think a signature ‘Joey look' now would probably be a bit of foundation and some nice contour º because you always got to have those cheekbones poppin’. I definitely think my signature colour for lips is an orangey, pinky nude – that's my favourite – and then for eyes, I like them a little bronzy, but I also like a little bit of sparkle. I’d probably do a bit of brown eyeshadow, then I like to use the Duochrome Liquid Eyeshadow (the sparkly one) on just the inner corners of my lids because I think it makes my eyes pop a bit more. The colour I use is Venus Envy, which has bluish, whitish hue to it. I only use a little because it's super pigmented, so it's nice and subtle. I like a shimmer no matter how old I am. I don't care.
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[My relationship with self confidence and social media] is ever changing. It's always something that I am dealing with in terms of going back and forth between feeling totally fine about it and a little peeved by it. But you know what? For the last couple of years I've been in a really great place in my personal life. I'm so lucky, I've got a really lovely family, I've got a lovely life at home, so when I think about that kind of stuff, it really doesn't matter at all. I feel like my relationship with that side of things is fine. I get to do what I love as a job and I hope to be around for a long time and that's all that matters. Also, these people, they don't actually know me. I always say this as a joke because, obviously, I don't care what they think, but I'm like, if they just got to know me, I think they might like me a little bit?
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I'm trying to flip through the Rolodex of videos in my phone that I've saved from makeup trends. There’s a lot. I've also learned a lot of TikTok trends from my nieces. Someone did a trend recently on how to make their upper lip look bigger, which I haven't tried, but I'm like, that's really cool. I also learned how eyebrows really change everything about your face from TikTok – there's this eyebrow filter. I actually think I would look good with straighter eyebrows instead of arched eyebrows, but I don't want to pluck them because I have a history of over plucking.
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…so that you don't fleck your eyeshadow dust on your nicely set foundation. This is more of a do what I say, not what I do thing because I never actually do it. I used to, and now every single time I do my makeup, I start putting on my foundation and I'm like, oh sh*t, f**k, I forgot. Then there's certain things I used to poo-poo, before I learned more about why you do them. I used to be like, "oh, why would anyone bake their makeup? Why would you bake your face?" It's so funny to me, if someone doesn't know anything about makeup, that sentence might blow their mind. But that's one I didn't understand until I talked to my makeup artist, Allan [Avendaño], and I'm like, oh, okay, I get it now. Usually if I poo-poo a makeup rule, I just don't know enough about it. I've still never baked myself, but I'm like, oh, that looks incredible.
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I actually didn't get it for beauty, necessarily. I got it for mental health and inner health, but also, it does help with beauty. It is such a luxurious item, but it really does help. I retain a lot of water, so it helps me de-puff and it's probably the most expensive de-puffer in the entire world, but I love it.
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That's always fun. Or, when I'm alone and getting ready for a night out, a little LCD Sound System really gets me in the mood.
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I think the beauty aspect of a character is so important in mentally transforming yourself into that person. For example, I did a show called We Were The Lucky Ones that came out earlier this year. It was set in the 1940s and I had a lot of different things that I never do in my daily routine that made me really get into that character, including how they did my hair and makeup. I'm so not a red lip person, but I wore a red lip for that role. Those things are so helpful in transforming you into somebody because you really need to kind of step outside of yourself and do things that maybe you wouldn't normally do to feel like you can step into a character.
I pick up lots of tips and tricks when I go on set, that I start trying out myself at home. After I filmed that show, I started wearing a red lip, then I realised: you know what? I don't really think I'm a red lip person. But when I go on sets, instead of throwing away the things that made me my character, I take little bits and pieces with me because I learn new things about myself through beauty when I do jobs.
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For more from GLAMOUR's Senior Beauty Editor, Elle Turner, follow her on Instagram @elleturneruk
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