Neilson Barnard/Getty ImagesWhen it comes to beauty, Angelina Jolie wants to see your soul.
Long hailed as one of the most beautiful women in the world, the Oscar winner takes a surprisingly simple approach to her beauty routine for someone whose appearance ignites a full-on frenzy every time she walks out the door.
As a self-proclaimed tomboy growing up, Jolie was less interested in product and more enthralled by personality. "I'm sure I had my moments when I was little where I would put makeup all over my face, but I was a bit of a tomboy. And then I was a bit of a punk," she recalled to InStyle. "Nowadays it's very popular to dye your hair blue, for example. In my day you bleached it and used a Sharpie [for color]."
Jolie continued, "I've never gone to a girlfriend's house and played makeup. I'm not one of those women who say, 'Hey, let's have a night and do each other's hair.' I've never been that, but I find that really sweet."
As a reflection of that—and the fact she's raising six children who can barely give her a minute to herself—her personal routine is straightforward. The star is "much more comfortable with just a little concealer for my dark circles. That's my main thing."
It's mostly dark spots that Jolie is focused on treating with help from the dermatologist she's had since she was 11 years old. "When I got pregnant, I had darker areas [on my face] that got darker. So I do IPL [intense pulsed light] every once in a while," the actress explained to the magazine.
In her quest to be naturally herself, she thinks of her late mother Marcheline Bertrand's words: "Let me see your soul."
"That was her thing. Whenever I'd get upset or something, she'd say, 'Let me see your soul.' What it meant was, 'Show me you. Are you mad? Let me see.' I've never really talked about that," Jolie recalled. "I think, I hope anyway, that's how I'm raising my children: Put what's inside you forward and find you, figure out who you are. Beauty—everybody has a different opinion about what that is. Intellect is the most beautiful. When you see somebody who has a mind on fire, that's sexy. A person who is empathetic and thoughtful and passionate—there's nothing more attractive than that. There's nothing you could wear or put on your face to cover up if your mind is blank and your heart is dark."
That's not to say she's averse to makeup. In fact, she stocked up on products for her 13-year-old daughter, Zahara, particularly after she wanted to play dress-up with a friend one night.
"I wear one color red, and I have black eyeliner and mascara—I have the most boring makeup kit. And my daughter and I are different shades of brown," she said. "I now have a backup kit in case anybody wants to play."
As Jolie continues to live her life as an actress, director, mother, activist, it is the passage of time that she finds most beautiful about her own looks. "I look in the mirror and I see that I look like my mother, and that warms me. I also see myself aging, and I love it because it means I'm alive—I'm living and getting older," she said. "Don't love having a random dark spot from a pregnancy, sure. I see my flaws. But what I see that I like isn't about a structure or an appearance. It's more that I see my family in my face. I see my age."