Paul Keating’s youngest daughter is blazing her own path in Hollywood
Entrepreneur Alexandra Keating has bold plans for her latest business venture, backed by Ashton Kutcher’s investment firm.
The offspring of powerful parents have no guarantee of success. In fact, a privileged position can often generate the opposite outcome. But rather than settling into an indulged life on the coat-tails of her father, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, and artistic mother Annita van Iersel, Alexandra Keating has forged her own impressive path.
The refreshingly unpretentious Keating is not afraid to cross a room or pick up the phone to connect with the type of influential and interesting people that may easily intimidate others, be it for professional or personal reasons.
It’s just one of the many fortunate by-products of growing up in elite political and social circles as the youngest daughter of the prominent former treasurer turned prime minister.
Keating’s savvy business acumen was apparent from the age of 19 when she created her first tech start-up, charity platform GoFundraise, while studying at the University of Sydney. She sold it in 2008 before moving to New York in 2011 where she worked at creative agency
Safari Sundays, later taking up a role as vice president marketing and partnerships at Thrillist. In between she co-founded app builder Dwnld, which was sold to Dropbox in 2017.
The 38-year-old AK, as she is known to her friends, now lives in LA with her English film director husband Rupert Sanders and is working on her latest “baby”, sustainable beauty brand Uni. It was inspired by a trip Keating took to the Great Barrier Reef several years ago and speaks to growing consumer demand for climate-friendly solutions via its closed-loop refill system and sustainably sourced range of body products including shampoo, body serum and handwash.
Uni., already a big hit in the US, launches in Australia at Mecca in January. “I went to the reef [and] they asked you to scrub your sunscreen off because it directly affects the coral reef underneath you. I had no idea that you could hurt one of the seven [natural] wonders of the world while visiting it,” she says. “And so, then I was like, ‘Wow, there’s a real gap in terms of reef-safe sunscreen, and applicable reef-safe sunscreen that you would actually wear.” (Uni. is currently awaiting FDA approval on its sunscreen but all other products are reef safe.)
That’s when Keating used her communication skills to approach internationally renowned creative director Mark Atlan, who has designed fragrance bottles for everyone from Tom Ford to David Beckham, to devise the packaging. “I knew it wouldn’t work unless it looked really cool and it functioned really well. I found out he lived in LA, and I had just moved to LA. I was like, ‘Well, what a coincidence’. I said, ‘Look, you designed the Comme des Garçons [perfume bottle] 30 years ago, it’s still culturally relevant. I have guys that I know in their forties who are wearing it and I also have teenagers that I know wear it. I really want you to look at what I’m doing and see if you could do that’,” she says.
“But when I told him it was bodycare, he was not very interested because he was a perfume [bottle] designer. But then he goes, ‘What are you going to call it?’ And I said, ‘Uni., like the sea urchin’, and he started sketching.”
Keating also approached Ashton Kutcher’s investment company Soundwaves seeking seed funding for the skincare start-up. “They asked a lot of questions. They tried the products. Like anything in the venture world there is a full process attached to it. But they’ve been really supportive and very involved.”
Kutcher’s business partner, music manager Guy Oseary, was especially encouraging. “He had a big Oscar party that he does with Madonna every year and he gave Uni. away to everyone. Both of them have made so many investments and they really understand brands; they’ve got a lot of really great insights which they share regularly.”
Just two years since its launch, Uni. is stocked and endorsed by influential environmentally mindful retail outlets Erewhon, Goop and Credo Beauty. “We really wanted to be the winner in functional, clean bodycare and the only way to do that was to get the seal of approval from those three parties,” she says.
WISH sat down with Keating in the 1920s Laurel Canyon bungalow she shares with Sanders. The pair married in 2021 in an intimate Santa Barbara wedding attended by just eight family members and friends thanks to covid restrictions.
“It was a great wedding and then we just texted everyone that we knew and said come to our house for drinks,” she says of the celebration held once restrictions eased. “Outside we had the Porsche with
‘Just Married’ and the Campbell’s soup [cans] and then everyone came in and were like, ‘What’s going on?’. We had a huge party. It was actually the perfect wedding because it was all super spontaneous. We just didn’t want to wait,” she says.
In the process Keating became stepmother to Sanders’ daughter Skyla and son Tennyson (Sonny) from his first marriage to model Liberty Ross (who is now married to American music-industry entrepreneur Jimmy Lovine). “They’re such amazing kids. Well, they’re not really kids anymore. Skyla is at NYU, which is really fun. It allows us to have a bigger world to play in because I get to hang out with her when I’m there … and then Sonny’s not far behind.”
Keating says she would like to have her own children one day with 53-year-old Sanders, director of superhero film The Crow, Ghost in the Shell with Scarlett Johansson and Snow White and the Huntsman, starring Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth. “Starting Uni. is my own baby, so we’ll get there. I guess I’m kind of a modern woman in that way. But yes, when the time’s right.”
The couple’s distinctive residence, nestled into the famous hills, was once home to legendary LA interior designer Paul Fortune, who created spaces for Marc Jacobs, Sofia Coppola and the Sunset Tower Hotel.
“He was a bit of an old legend, Paul. Apparently, they used to call him ‘Paul Cost-a-Fortune’, which I thought was quite hysterical. I really love how light it is. It just has this very airy, light energy. It’s very strange in the sense of, there’s no end of the house and then the outdoors begin. It’s very in nature. I think a lot of parts of LA are quite soulless, but Laurel’s definitely got a beating heart,” Keating says.
The beauty and tranquillity of their hillside hideaway doesn’t stop Keating from longing for her hometown and family, however. She’s close to her father, mother and three siblings, Patrick, Caroline and particularly Katherine, who lives nearby in LA.
Even after buying her own apartment in Sydney’s Potts Point in her early twenties, Keating chose to live with her dad. “We just got on. He’s remarkable. He’s very easy to live with. We had a really good time. And I think it was really cool for him because I would come back in the afternoons and I’d always bring people by,” she says.
“I spent most of my New Year’s Eves with my parents, I brought them to the parties, or I’d go to their parties. We very much move as a family. A lot of their friends are my friends and vice versa.”
Keating cherishes her childhood and appreciates the rare experiences and opportunities it afforded her and her siblings.
“Probably it has made all of us kids a lot more worldly but has also given us the confidence to go and speak to a lot of different people about a breadth of different things. If there’s someone I want to talk to in a room, I’ll go up to them. It’s to the frustration of my husband, but I will literally go up to anyone and have a chat.”
While her father had a public profile as a result of his political career, her mother was more understated but no less influential.
“My mum is a real go-getter. She left home before she was 20 and then she was an air hostess for Alitalia. Back in the day you had to speak seven languages to be a
first-class air hostess and so she really put herself through the program. She lived in Rome. She had a white Porsche. She’s very cool,” Keating says. “[She] was the one that made me move out of Australia. She was very keen, not just me but you’ll notice that with all the kids, that we’ve left. She wanted us to have our own lives before we settled down and she really believed that it’s important to be worldly.”
Keating says neither of her parents shower her with praise despite her achievements, but her “husband does, a lot”.
“I don’t know why, it’s just not part of our family culture to pat ourselves on the back. We don’t really talk like that. I mean Dad’s a man of the people. He fights for everyone more than anyone else does. I grew up [with] my parents working a lot and it was not working to make money. It was working to create a better future, to create a better environment, and that was what was instilled in me. It’s never been about financial success; it’s about changing things,” she says.
This story is from the August issue of WISH.
