For Alexandra Daddario, Simple Routines Are Key to Staying Healthy During Quarantine
For Alexandra Daddario, overcoming the stress of life during a pandemic doesn’t require a lofty meditation program, extreme fitness goals or a radical new diet.
Her key to serenity is simple: Develop quarantine-friendly routines and stick to them.
”Keeping up with routine is important,” Daddario says via video interview. “You lose so much of it [in quarantine], in addition to the added stress, fear and general news cycle,” she says good-naturedly.
The actress, who is best known for “True Detective” and “Baywatch” (and boasts 17 million social media followers), says that no matter the weight of the tasks, dedication to routines has helped her maintain a sense of normalcy.
Daddario has mostly been at home in Los Angeles during the pandemic, but with film and TV production now reopening, she travels on occasion to wherever her next project is shooting.
In L.A., she hunkered down with a small group of close friends. They kept busy with at-home activities such as cooking, wine tasting and nail painting. Though that made for ample bonding time, they realized their normal healthy routines and habits were falling by the wayside.
“There were plenty of mornings when we woke up, sat on the couch, and by 4 p.m. we were still in our pajamas and hadn’t washed our faces,” she laughs. Then, amid the stresses everyone’s been grappling with at home, her work schedule picked up. In Los Angeles, she wrapped production on “Songbird,” a pandemic thriller that was shot in L.A. entirely during COVID-19, with cast and crew members tested daily for the virus. More recently, she flew to London for a project that is still hush-hush.
For Daddario, this meant long-haul flights, layers of movie makeup and, depending on the gig, hours in the sun.
Was it a labor of love? Absolutely, but she was stretching herself too thin. It was all taking a toll on her both mentally and physically. She needed to make a change.
From that point on, regular self-care regimens became a top priority. She made space for wellness-focused activities, including healthy recreation that fed mind, body and soul, and a beauty routine that better served her “new normal” lifestyle.
For Daddario, wellness means playing the piano, a skill she picked up as a child. “When I’m stressed out, I’ll go downstairs and play,” she says. Daddario also sings, but she says no one would want to hear her. “I wanted to be on Broadway,” she admits, “but unfortunately my voice did not cooperate.”
Wellness also includes taking her rescue dog Levon for a walk — extra walks, in fact. “The more I sat in the house, I realized, ‘Oh, this is what my dog has to do [all the time]? This sucks.’” Those extra walks are exercise and healthy sun exposure for Daddario as well as a relief for Levon, whose almost 50,000 social media followers makes him practically an influencer in his own right.
For Daddario, though, self-care isn’t just wellness activities, it’s what she puts on her face, too. Proper skin care wasn’t new to her by any means, but between increased time at home and heightened stress due to quarantine, Daddario realized the need to upgrade her regimen to something that would yield visible results, keep her skin hydrated and even give her the confidence to go makeup-free.
In search of a product to take her skin care game to the next level, Daddario discovered Pitera Essence, a lightweight yet highly concentrated facial treatment from prestige beauty brand SK-II. Known as “miracle water” in Asia, this essence is almost completely made up of pure Pitera, a natural bio ingredient cultured exclusively in Japan for SK-II.
In the morning (post-workout, of course), she cleanses, applies a toner to wipe away remaining dirt and oil, and then pats on the Pitera Essence. Daddario caps off the regimen with a combination of sunscreen, eye cream and moisturizer if she’s in need of a little extra hydration.
“When you look in the mirror and you feel like your normal self rather than a dull, dry version of yourself, it’s a better way to start your day,” she says.
Daddario’s nighttime routine is similar, with the addition of the Pitera Facial Treatment Mask once a week — and no sunscreen, of course. She classifies her skin as normal to oily, noting that the texture fluctuates based on the weather. However, Pitera Essence promises similar results for all skin types.
This routine has proven more effective for Daddario’s quarantine lifestyle. Upon introducing Pitera Essence into her skin care routines, she noticed results almost instantly. Even after her longest days on set, she’d wake up to her face looking nourished and radiant.
”When you find [a product] that makes you feel more like your younger, healthy self, it’s incredible,” Daddario says, adding that incorporating Pitera Essence into her skin care routine was “an easy-to-use, quick fix” that gave her bright, glowy skin.
As she hoped, Daddario says she feels less of a need for makeup since incorporating the essence into her beauty routine, adding that not even trans-Atlantic flights affect her skin anymore.
She flew to London, split time between shooting and quarantining at her hotel, then flew back to L.A., where Daddario was greeted with compliments from her roommates, who were shocked to see a glowing face fresh off a tiring work trip, a 10-hour-plus flight, and all the dehydration and jet lag that comes with it.
The new routines had paid off, not just on her face, but in her outlook. She was back to feeling like herself — in some ways, better than ever.
“You need to have that confidence,” says Daddario, “when you’re going through tough times.”
To try the Pitera Essence in the First Experience Kit, go to SK-II.com.
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