We love it when a celebrity chooses to embrace signs of getting older and wear their gray hair loudly and proudly. But we have to admit that we’re impressed when one of them offers a genius hack for temporarily covering their silver strands. Case in point: Salma Hayek, who recently opened up about the very unconventional way she hides her gray roots when she’s short on time and doesn’t want to resort to using messy hair dye.
The 58-year-old actress is the most recent star of Vogue‘s “Beauty Secrets” series, where she takes us through her entire beauty routine, from the products she uses to prep her skin for makeup to the mascara she uses to cover up her gray hairs. No, that wasn’t a typo; she actually uses black mascara—specifically the Benefit Cosmetics Roller Lash Mascara ($29).
“I do not dye my hair,” she says in the video. “If you choose not to dye your hair and you have the white [hairs] like I do…I use mascara.”
This actually isn’t the first time Hayek has brought up using mascara as a root touch-up product. Last year, she shared the same exact hack in a video posted to her Instagram account, noting that she usually only uses the product when she’s on her own and doesn’t have a hairstylist or colorist on standby. That said, her hairstylist, Miguel Martin Perez, prefers to use an actual root touch-up spray to conceal the grays, as shown in the aforementioned Instagram video.
While we can’t personally recommend using mascara to color your roots (that’s something you should refer to a hair expert about), if you are going to do it, you might just want to make sure the formula you use is waterproof at the very least.
