Photo Credit: Drew Altizer
Olivia Wilde is an actor, mother, and most recently a clean beauty activist. A year and a half ago, the star joined forces with True Botanicals, a San Francisco-based natural skincare collection founded by Hillary Peterson. “Someone recommended the products to me because I was already on a lookout, had been for years, for the cleanest products,” Wilde told Haute Living when she was recently in town for the opening of True Botanicals Jackson Street flagship. “I had been researching conscious brands for a few years—everything from fashion to food to skincare to baby products. When it came to skincare, that’s where I found the biggest disconnect between efficacy and the non-toxic nature of it. There were a few brands that were organic to a certain extent but didn’t have the results that I was looking for. Someone said True Botanicals is the only one that checks both those boxes.”
Photo Credit: Russell & Abraham
Coming from a family of journalists, the first thing Wilde did was to research the brand. “I appreciate research. Particularly in a non-toxic and organic world, I resent lazy research and fake science, phony science. I think it’s hurt the movement,” she says. Wilde was impressed by what she found, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect: she was looking for a beauty company to partner with. “I wasn’t interested in being the face of a brand again. I had done that before, and it didn’t feel authentic. I was toying with the idea of forming my own brand,” she says. “I thought oh, ‘I’m learning all this information; I would love to partner with someone and form my own brand and offer people clean beauty alternative.’ Then, once I learned about True Botanicals, I was like ‘well, they’re doing everything that I would wanna do, so let me just meet with them.’” It turns out that Peterson was searching for a celebrity ambassador and the two clicked. A cancer survivor who has expert knowledge in the field of beauty (including aromatherapy), Peterson is now Wilde’s clean beauty guru.
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A natural beauty, Wilde is currently editing Booksmart, a film set to be released next year that marks her directorial debut. Although our conversation is short, her passion for conscious consumerism is obvious. She’s incredibly down to earth, and genuine—qualities that celebrities dealing with the grind of back-to-back interviews can sometimes lack. Both candid and sincere, Wilde shared insight on her youth, current life, and what True Botanicals item she can’t live without. Here is what she had to say.
Photo Credit: True Botanicals
Her favorite True Botanicals product: “The face oil. When I am running low, I tend to panic. It’s the only moisturizer I need. It’s not like it’s a face oil that you use in conjunction with a moisturizer. It’s the only thing you need. It’s so nourishing. The experience of it does feel like a ritual to me. I find it very calming. When I don’t have it, that’s the one that I feel I need the most.”
Photo Credit: @oliviawilde
How her family enjoys True Botanicals: “My husband, well, we’re not married, my partner and our son, and my daughter, because I use it on both the kids. I have two men in my house who are avid True Botanicals fans. Jason, it’s funny, because he doesn’t look at what any of them are called. He’s like, ‘Can I have the stuff that makes it [my skin] feel soft?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ I also benefit from it, because then he just smells really good.”
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On learning the importance of self-care: “What’s interesting about that to me is understanding that we’re worth that effort. I think it can still feel like high maintenance. Oh, I’d rather not drink out of plastic. Oh, but it’s BPA free. It says green. Just taking those extra steps, I think, often there’s still this sense of shame attached to it. Motherhood drove it to the next level of busyness. The ability to say I’m worth taking this extra step. It doesn’t make me high maintenance. My health is worth it. My sanity is worth it. That has been a real revelation to me.”
Photo Credit: Russell & Abraham
On her signature scent: “I have two favorites, right now. Ood is one that is really special. Then there’s one with patchouli that’s also really great. I’m a big scent fan. One of the first things we [Peterson and Wilde] connected on was our love of scents. I really was excited about this aromatherapy launch, because I have been interested in aromatherapy for a long time, but had no idea how to incorporate it into my lifestyle.”
Photo Credit: Drew Altizer
Why she loves working with True Botanicals: “People will ask me what ingredients they feel like they should avoid. Now I have an incredible resource in Hillary and everybody at True Botanicals, but I love that I can just recommend products. I like that I can do the work for them. Now I’m able to share that education I’ve had, which feels great.
Photo Credit: @oliviawilde
On growing up with a mom who was into clean beauty before it was cool: “My mom has always had really high standards for ingredients, whether it was in food or certainly in beauty products. She was early to the party, the green party. In our showers as kids, there was always some weird soap that looked like a rock that was hard. I never knew what it was. It had lots of grains of lavender in it. I was like, ‘Mom, can’t you get a normal soap that other people have?’ She was like, ‘I will not touch that, neither will you.’ All of our conditioner and shampoo was all natural stuff. Just pre Whole Foods. She really sourced that stuff.”
On how she looks up to and admires her mother: “I would say she’s still a clean beauty guru. She’s 66 now and looks incredible. I think she’s a good example of when you live your life clean, it’s actually about beauty as much about health as it is anything else. That’s actually something that the experience of working with True Botanicals has really made clear to me. It’s not about problem-solving, which I think a lot of people in their teens and 20s and even into their 30s becomes about problem-solving, as opposed to lasting health. It’s about the nourishment of your skin, creating the results that you’re looking for.”
