Do you remember the primary time you checked out someone and thought they have to be the prettiest person you’d ever seen? I distinctly recall pondering exactly that at age five, nearly 40 years ago, after I was watching Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing within the Dark” music videoduring which a 20-year-old, short-haired Courteney Cox was pulled on stage to bop with the Boss and, ultimately, make an lovely first impression on the world — especially on a certain kindergartener in Recent Jersey who suddenly desired to chop off her waist-length hair. (Reader, she didn’t.)

While I used to be hoping to possibly seem like her someday, Cox, it seems, was impatient to grow out that shaggy pixie. “That was just absolutely probably the most horrific haircut I’ve ever had in my life,” Cox told me over the phone. “I didn’t prefer it then, and I definitely do not like it now.” In actual fact, the one haircut she regrets more is the time she got those infamous baby bangs worn in a certain horror movie franchise she’s not currently at liberty to debate as a consequence of the continuing SAG-AFTRA strike. (She will be able to’t mention that one kinda popular sitcom she starred in either.)

Those bangs made a hilarious resurgence on Instagram back in 2020, when, like several celebrities throughout the first yr of the pandemic, she began a recent chapter as a prolific content creator. And considering her obvious knack for it — her cooking and comedy Reels get tons of of 1000’s of likes — it’s hard to consider it took her until March 2023 to finally join TikTok, where her clips now get thousands and thousands of likes. “I do not take it seriously,” she tells me. “I try to only be creative and silly, and I wish to [create content about] things that I’d wanna know or would make me laugh.”

Cox says that her beauty routine for recording a TikTok doesn’t differ all that much from days when she’s not creating content: just a little undereye concealer, mascara, and after all, a moisturizer that works wonders even when her skin has been coping with frequent traveling in super-dry airplane cabins. “That is why I really like Dermalogica Stabilizing Repair Cream,” says Cox, the brand’s newest partner. “It really protects your barrier.” And since a not-insignificant portion of her posts are recorded outside, sunscreen is non-negotiable — a day by day habit she’s developed only prior to now decade.

Now, by way of TikTok consumption, Cox says she spends more time looking for out home-care hacks relatively than health and beauty content because so lots of the “recent” trends disseminated by Gen Z influencers appear to be things the remaining of us have known about for a long time. Like, why is cottage cheese having a moment on TikTok? Cox has been the dairy staple’s biggest fan for so long as she will remember. And though I could not see her over the phone, I could sense her lighting up once we stumbled upon the subject.