EXCLUSIVE: Kerri-Anne Kennerley talks Botox and her ‘secret beauty weapon’

Looking good and feeling good are inter-dependent for Kerri-Anne Kennerley and she has no problem admitting that cosmetic surgery, Botox and Fraxel are all part of her beauty repertoire.

“There was always that stigma attached to it, but then you do get to the ‘I don’t give a toss’ age and stage, and people can say whatever they like,” she tells The Weekly.

“I have regular Botox injections because I hate having a frown line that makes me look cranky when I’m not,” she writes in her tell-all biography A Bold Life, on sale on October 31. But her secret weapon is Fraxel.

Kerri-Anne discovered the laser treatment that she says “burns off dark patches and freckles” when she was having treatment to remove a basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and now swears by it. “If you look at early photos of me in the ‘80s and ‘90s, even on Midday, my freckles were black. People used to call in and complain saying ‘You should put make-up on her chest, she’s got so many freckles’.

“When I had a BCC on my nose my dermatologist suggested Fraxel. He said, ‘we’ll watch it for a while; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t’. And knock on wood I never got the skin cancer back.”

Since then Kerri-Anne has become a huge fan of Fraxel as a preventative for skin cancers but also to give her a beautiful even complexion.

“I had my whole face Fraxeled some years ago….It’s not for the fainthearted and the treatment is quite uncomfortable at first. The next day you feel as if you have really bad sunburn. Your eyes puff up so much you can hardly see, but after a week I was thrilled.

“My dermatologist now uses Fraxel as a precursor to getting skin cancers. It traumatises your skin and makes the collagen and everything work a lot harder and it fights any skin cancers growing through. After that I had my arms and hands done.”

“We never knew about how harmful the sun was when I was a kid in Queensland. Through the ‘90s, from Midday for 10 years, I’d have at least a couple of skin cancers burned off every year. Maybe just two or three at a time, but I would have had dozens and dozens done, every single year for at least 10 years. They kept growing through. But since I’ve had the overall Fraxel, I haven’t had one burnt off.”

Other treatments Kerrie-Anne loves are chemical peels “to keep your skin fresher” and a light treatment called Omnilux to reboot collagen.

“I’ve had all these things done and will continue to do so in the future,” she writes in her book. “I am happy with what I’ve done. I think it is subtle and tasteful.”

Post continues after video: Kerri-Anne’s emotional tribute to John

I ask Kerri-Anne what the benefits are of getting older. “None,” she laughs, adding. “Other than you don’t get paranoid about what other people think or try to prove yourself so often. You have that care factor attitude that goes ‘eh, get over yourself’. And if anybody wants to give you a hard time or be judgemental I really am not interested.”

Read more about Kerri-Anne Kennerley and how she escaped her first marriage in The Australian Women’s Weekly December issue on sale now.

Profile Juliet Rieden

Juliet Rieden is editor-at-large of The Australian Women’s Weekly where she writes main feature stories, is the royal correspondent and books editor. She is also a non-fiction author.