“I looked like a f—ing Cyclops.”
It’s become fairly common for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars to go under the knife to help perfect their flawless appearance. While many stars opt to go for something subtle to enhance their natural beauty, things don’t always go according to plan. It’s always a possibility for surgeries to go awry and that’s exactly what these stars say happened to them. Thankfully, most of these celebs were able to correct what went wrong — but it served as an important lesson in loving themselves exactly how they are.
Find out what happened when these stars went under the knife…
1. Priyanka Chopra
Back in the early 2000s, Priyanka Chopra went under the knife when doctors recommended she have a polyp in her nasal cavity removed. Unfortunately, the doctors made a mistake during surgery, accidentally shaving the bridge of her nose, causing it to collapse. The botched nose job led Priyanka to fall into a deep depression — and she was even fired from multiple movies.
“It was a dark phase. This thing happens, and my face looks completely different, and I went into a deep, deep depression,” Priyanka shared on The Howard Stern Show, adding that she felt that her acting career “was over before it started.”
Priyanka’s late father, who was also a doctor, finally encouraged her to get a corrective surgery done. She has since had multiple surgeries to restore her nose to its former appearance and says she’s finally comfortable with how she looks.
2. Cardi B
Cardi B has always been open about her plastic surgery procedures, including a nose job she got a few years back. It turns out that Cardi didn’t even want to go under the knife but was forced to in order to correct botched fillers. Cardi explained that she was told getting filler was a non-surgical way to make her nose smaller but it ended up just making everything worse.
“I did fillers on my nose in 2019. And that s— f—ed my nose up,” she said on REVOLT’s The Jason Lee Show. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do to myself?’ When you see stuff on Instagram, it just makes sense. But fillers just made my nose longer and it got wider.”
Cardi ultimately underwent a rhinoplasty in 2020 and says she’s now done with plastic surgery.
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3. Bristol Palin
When Bristol Palin was just 19, she underwent a breast reduction that went incredibly wrong. The botched surgery left her with damaged muscle tissue and intense scarring — and she had to have nine other surgeries in order to correct the problems. Reflecting on the situation, Bristol shared that it made her “very self conscious” her entire adult life.
“Sharing wayyyyy TMI right now, but had my 9th breast reconstruction surgery last night — yes, NINTH. All stemming from a botched breast reduction I had when I was 19,” Bristol wrote on her Instagram stories. “I’ve had previous surgeries trying to correct the initial damage of muscle tissue and terrible scarring.”
Bristol later shared that she hoped it was the last surgery she’d have to have and was healing well.
4. Linda Evangelista
Linda Evangelista says she was “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured” after undergoing numerous CoolSculpting sessions, an FDA approved “fat-freezing” procedure often seen as a noninvasive alternative to liposuction. Between August 2015 to February 2016, Linda reportedly underwent seven sessions — but early on noticed that something was going wrong.
She says that after three months of treatments she began to notice bulges on her chin, thighs and chest area. Instead of shrinking with every procedure, she claimed that the areas she was treating were growing bigger and hardening until they eventually turned numb.
“I tried to fix it myself, thinking I was doing something wrong,” Evangelista shared, explaining that she tried dieting and exercising. “I got to where I wasn’t eating at all. I thought I was losing my mind.”
Linda finally went to a doctor for help in June 2016 and was diagnosed with Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia, a rare complication of CoolSculpting that results in firm, and well-demarcated tissue masses. She then underwent two full-body liposuction surgeries which did not help and left her unable to work. Linda went on to sue Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc. for $50 million in damages, a case which was settled in 2022.
5. Tara Reid
In 2004, Tara Reid underwent a breast augmentation and body contouring procedure that went terribly wrong. It left her with boobs larger than she anticipated as well as a hernia and a “ripply, bulgy” stomach. Then, a wardrobe malfunction at a party revealed the “botched” job to the whole world, which Tara says “devastated” her.
“My stomach became the most ripply, bulgy thing. I had a hernia, this huge bump next to my belly button. As a result, I couldn’t wear a bikini. I lost a lot of work,” Tara told Us Weekly, adding that the surgery was “probably the stupidest thing” she ever did and she “didn’t know it was going to ruin [her] career.”
Tara has since undergone corrective surgery and gone through therapy to help her with her self confidence.
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6. Sharon Osbourne
In 2021, Sharon Osbourne underwent a facelift that left her looking “horrendous.” Sharon explained that when she saw the results of the five-hour surgery, she was shocked and called out the surgeon for the botched job. Sharon says even her husband Ozzy was aghast at the results.
“[To the surgeon] I’m, like, ‘You’ve got to be f—ing joking.’ One eye was different to the other. I looked like a f—ing Cyclops. I’m, like, ‘All I need is a hunchback,'” Sharon told The Sunday Times.
In a later interview she shared, “That was the worst thing that I ever did… I had one eye here and one eye there and my mouth was all skewwhiff, and then I had to wait for that to heal before I could go back and have it corrected.”
Thankfully, Sharon has since been able to correct the results of the surgery.
7. Kenny Rogers
In the early 2000s, Kenny Rogers went under the knife to fix the wrinkles around his eyes. Unfortunately, the procedure didn’t turn out the way he hoped, explaining that he looked “too tight around the eyelids” and it was driving him “crazy.”
“You look at yourself and you go ‘could I be better if I did this or I did that?’ And I did it, and the guy who did it was one of the world’s best. But he just had this concept that the edge of your eyes had to be higher than a certain place. And I regret that,” he later told CBS News.
Kenny says he’s now learned to live with his decision to go under the knife.
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8. Mickey Rourke
During his career as a boxer, Mickey Rourke suffered multiple facial injuries and had to have just as many surgeries to put his face back together. Unfortunately, Mickey says he went to the wrong surgeon for the reconstructive surgery.
“I had my nose broken twice. I had five operations on my nose and one on a smashed cheekbone… I had to have cartilage taken from my ear to rebuild my nose and a couple of operations to scrape out the cartilage because the scar tissue wasn’t healing properly. That was one of the most painful operations, but the worst was haemorrhoids,” Mickey told Daily Mail.
He continued, “Most of it was to mend the mess of my face because of the boxing, but I went to the wrong guy to put my face back together.”
