When we typically see Megan Mullally, she’s wearing “drag show-like” makeup to transform into her Will & Grace character, Karen Walker, but in her everyday life, she lives a makeup-free mantra.
“I’m just lazy, I just don’t have time to wear makeup,” Mullally, 59, tells PEOPLE for this week’s Beautiful Issue. “I feel like I have the only social media account of 5,000 selfies with no makeup cause I just don’t care.”
Lucky for her husband, Parks and Recreation actor Nick Offerman, he loves it when she’s makeup-free. “He tells me every minute that I’m the most beautiful, sexy, incredible woman in the world, which couldn’t possibly be true, but it’s nice,” she shares. “He always prefers me without makeup, you know, a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans.”
Given her low-maintenance beauty philosophy, it’s unsurprising Mullally follows a very pared-down skincare regimen, admitting to never using moisturizer until she was in her 40s. “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t have a facial,” she says. “I try to get facials although lately I’ve been busy and I haven’t been able to, but every night I wash my face and I put on a toner sometimes, it depends on much time I have or how tired I am. Sometimes I do like a little serum or something, but I always do a moisturizer and I feel like, the goopier the better.”
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The only ride-or-die makeup product she can’t live (or go one minute) without is lip balm. “I’m addicted to it. I can’t not have lip balm on for more than like 20 seconds or I become homicidal.” (She’s partial to Aquaphor.)
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For someone who is so confident in living a makeup-free life, feeling comfortable in her own skin didn’t come naturally.
“I learned to love everything over the years because I don’t think I liked anything for a long time,” she says. “Part of that was because during my upbringing there was a significant person in my life, who [thought nothing] was ever right, including my looks. Not my mother, I will say, I don’t want anyone to think it was her. So I felt like nothing was ever good enough and I was in a ballet company. So you know, that’s brutal too.”
She adds, “I think back on how cute I was — I see pictures and I think, ‘Oh my God I was so cute,’ but I didn’t think so at all. I hope that everybody could just embrace everything about themselves physically and just feel really great about yourself, from the switch, because later it’ll make for such an easier life.”
And it took her until she turned 50 to realize that looks aren’t everything. “I wish it was sooner than that, so I would say to everybody that I hope they can feel like looks aren’t everything from the time they’re 2. I didn’t get there quite that fast but I’m glad I got there at least.”
For more from our Beautiful issue, pick up the magazine when it hits newsstands on Friday and check out all of our coverage on People.com.
