The model, actress and mother shares the story behind her Australian-inspired natural skincare brand. By Dani Maher

ELSA PATAKY is a busy woman. When I speak to her over the phone one Friday morning, she apologises in advance if I hear any child-related ruckus in the background — “School was cancelled because of the rain,” she tells me.

Born in Madrid, Pataky started out in a local theatre company before she made her way into the television and film industry, eventually becoming an international star with her recurring roles in the Fast & Furious franchise. The actress and model most recently starred in Netflix’s action flick Interceptor, and had a brief cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder alongside husband Chris Hemsworth. But the actor isn’t the only part of Australia she’s fallen in love with.

“I fell in love, I think, with the natural beauty of Byron [Bay],” she says of the place she’s called home since 2015. “I think living here makes you just really want to embrace a more natural approach to beauty. This place is so spiritual, it has something special about it.”

It’s that love for natural beauty — and for skincare, one built up through years of on-camera appearances and sweet memories with a mother who greatly values self-care — that led Pataky to co-founding Purely Byron, an all-natural skincare company focused on showcasing Byron Bay’s potent natural botanicals. Taking a break from her busy day, Pataky let us in on the story behind her new brand, and the secrets to her own glowing skin.

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Well, as a person that spends a lot of time on camera, you have access to a lot of products, and start to have a lot of knowledge about them. I was really interested in skincare in general, and I’m a person that really likes to take care of myself — I’m pretty healthy in what I eat, and I’ve been always interested in studying what is good for you and what is good for your body.

As they say, we are what we eat, but I think it’s also really important what you use on your body and in your skin products in the same way, it’s so important. So I wanted to start using something that had natural products with no chemicals and no parabens and, and one thing to another led me to just be interested into something like this. And then a founder came to me with this idea, and I got really excited about it — something [that focuses on] nature, with things that are recycled. All those things just follow my ideology, so I was just really into it. It just fell like that in my hands, and I was like, why not, let’s do it.

My mum always took care of herself so much. I really liked watching her doing her makeup, she was very elegant. One of the things I [learned from her], and I’ve been using it ever since, is how every time she showers, she will put cream on her whole body — I don’t know, it’s something that not everybody does, but for me, I grew up with that. So I can’t shower and not just moisturise my whole body, and I learned it from her.

I think we all learned from our mums, and the rituals that they do, and they stuck to us. So I’ve always taken care of myself in that way. Very simple, though; I can’t spend much time on it cause I’m very active. So I like something that is quick and you can do it in five minutes and you’re ready to go, you know?

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I fell in love, I think, with the natural beauty of Byron. I think living here makes you just really want to embrace a more natural approach to beauty. This place is so spiritual, it has something special about it. Of course, I wanted to use natural products, and I discovered the natural botanicals are amazing here in Byron. So when we started with it, I wanted to just use all those botanicals that are so effective and so powerful.

And also, when you become a mum, you don’t have much time for a skincare routine. So I love always a simple approach and it has to be effective with lots of products that can be just customised and just for you, for every person has their own needs, I guess.

We had a long journey, understanding these botanicals and how active and effective they can be on our skin. Then the most important thing was to get a team of experts, because I’m not an expert — I know a little bit, but not expert, so that helped me to bring it to life. So I collaborated with these two amazing women [Jacqueline Rosen Weisz and Kate Norbiato] that I love — they are really experts in beauty and skin, and they really helped me to create the skincare range. We were all on the same page that we wanted to be from Byron and everything has to be done here, as much as we could.

So it’s been a long process, but really beautiful, because it helped me discover even more of Byron and the beauty of it.

It’s been a LONG process, but really BEAUTIFUL, because it helped me DISCOVER even more of BYRON and [it’s] BEAUTY

We were really conscious about our footprint on the environment. And the community was really important, we wanted to give back to the community here too. We just wanted to make sure that this sustainable approach was at the heart of everything we do. And we also wanted to honour the land and power of Byron’s natural botanicals.

Our products are free of synthetic fragrance or silicons; they don’t have PHAs or sulphites or any parabens. They’re actually all natural, there’s nothing chemical about them. And we achieved incredible things with our packaging — we use post-consumer recycled plastic in all our products, and everything is also recyclable.

We just came out with this amazing product, our Divine Ritual Cleansing Oil, that I use morning and night. It’s beautiful because it’s just very [gentle], and when you use it, it doesn’t leave any residue. It’s perfect for all skin types, and it moisturises a little bit — so it’s one of my favourites. It comes with a little muslin cloth to take it off, and your skin feels amazing.

Then usually I have my Native Sunrise Blend Moisturiser. It really boosts hydration, and leaves my skin with an amazing kind of dewy glow — and that glow is something we tried to achieve in our products a lot, because it reminds you of Byron, it’s that natural glow that you have.

Then at nighttime, I use our Divine Ritual Derma Roller. It’s been one of my favourites since my team showed it to me — I still have the first one they made. I try not to do it every night, but I love it — so I do it maybe three times a week. It actually stimulates the collagen, and the skin really glows after. So I do that very quick, like three times, and then I use our Divine Ritual Balm to calm it down because it stays a little bit red, which is good because it feels like something is going on in your skin. It has a beautiful essential oil blend, so you go to bed feeling like you’ve been in a spa or something, I love it.

And there’s another tool that I really love, our Divine Ritual Face Sculptor. I use it a couple of times a week and you see the difference — it improves the contours of my face and reduces the puffiness under my eyes.

And you can do it all very quick, it takes five minutes. But you can take your time to enjoy it too; if you have time, it’s very beautiful to have your own ritual. So when I don’t have the kids, I like to get into the bathtub and do it all laying there. When you have time, you can do the clay mask too. So, yeah, I think some of the products are for people that want to have that spa experience, and other ones that you just can use them every night.

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Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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