5 Celebs Who Regretted Their Face Tune-Ups

While most celebrities would still rather credit their undeniable face transformations to age, weight loss, or makeup, and ignore the elephant in the room, plenty of stars have also opened up about their experiences with plastic surgery. Some entertainers who have gone under the knife to alter an insecurity have had only positive things to say about their results, helping boost the popularity of these procedures and lessen the stigma surrounding them. 

For example, Kaley Cuoco, who has been open about her plastic surgery for a long time, told Women's Health in 2016, "Years ago, I had my nose done. And my boobs — best thing I ever did." Another star who got a rhinoplasty, Khloé Kardashian, candidly revealed on X (formerly Twitter), "My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner" while discussing her 2019 surgery. However, not every celebrity's life changed for the better in their pursuit of youth and perfection.

Melanie Griffith had initially loved how her injectables turned out — until she heard what people had to say about the drastic transformation of her face. "I didn't [realize] until people started saying. 'Oh my god, what has she done?!'" she told Net-a-Porter in 2017 (via E! News). "I was so hurt I went to a different doctor and he started dissolving all of this s*** that this other woman doctor had put in." Griffith is certainly not the first nor the only star to say that they wished they'd thought twice before touching up their face. Lets take a look at five other celebrities and why they ended up regretting their face tune-ups.

Throughout her nearly five decades in the entertainment industry, Sharon Osbourne hasn't just worn many hats — she's also sported several different faces after repeatedly going under the knife. The talent manager-slash-television host-slash-reality star has made no secret of how much work she's gotten done, revealing in her shows and interviews that she had undergone at least 10 cosmetic surgeries and procedures between 1987 and 2022. 

By the time she attended a movie premiere in 2002, Osbourne looked 50 going on 40, thanks to two facelifts, Botox, and filler injections. She later shared that these had already taken a toll on her self-esteem at the time (via Business Insider). But it wasn't until she noticed that her "face look[ed] plastic" in photos in 2012 that the Osbourne matriarch felt she had gone too far with the surgeries, and declared on "The Talk" that she would stop inflicting "more abuse" on her face (via People).

Osbourne broke her own promise just seven years later when she got a lift on the lower half of her face that had her walking around with a snarl for weeks. Despite this, she followed it up with another procedure that she would end up describing as "the worst thing that I ever did," and made her swear off face tune-ups for good: a third full facelift. "I looked like Cyclops. I had one eye here and one eye there and my mouth was all skewwhiff," she confessed to The Times in 2023. Additional plastic surgeries appeared to have fixed the issues from her botched facelift by the time she attended a red-carpet event in March 2022, leaving then-70-year-old Osbourne's face looking even smoother and fuller than it did at 50.

The Hadid sisters have been dogged by plastic surgery rumors for years. But while Gigi Hadid insisted that she's never gone under the knife, her younger sister, Bella Hadid, confirmed that she's not totally au naturel, having gotten a nose job when she was a teenager. Her thin, sculpted nose ended up being one of her trademark features, immortalized in hundreds of photoshoots and commercials. However, during a 2022 interview with Vogue, Bella admitted that she regretted taking that irreversible step at age 14, saying, "I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors. I think I would have grown into it." 

As seen in a photo of her from October 2010, the nose Bella was born with had a slight bump, a thicker bridge, and a rounded tip that pointed downward. In 2022, more than a decade after her surgery, her nose was much slimmer and more defined, with no bump in sight. The tip also no longer looked as round and now curved upward. However, it wasn't just her nose that transformed dramatically.

Bella's lifted eyebrows and eyes, high cheekbones, sharp jawline, and narrow face also look completely different from her teenage features, fueling speculation that she's had more work done. However, she told Vogue that she hadn't had plastic surgery since her rhinoplasty. "People think I fully f***ed with my face because of one picture of me as a teenager looking puffy. I'm pretty sure you don't look the same now as you did at 13, right?" Bella said. "I have never used filler. Let's just put an end to that. I have no issue with it, but it's not for me."

"Friends" not only catapulted Courteney Cox to international fame but also made her a standout beauty icon of the 1990s. Her jet-black hair, bright blue eyes, and angular features amassed a loyal following that only keeps growing as new generations discover the hit sitcom. However, after the series wrapped, Cox's face underwent a major transformation that left her looking nearly unrecognizable. In a photo of her from 2014, her lips, cheeks, and jaw looked much fuller compared to her appearance in 1995. While weight gain could be an explanation, she later admitted that going overboard with fillers had caused her face to swell up unnaturally. 

Though it's unclear when exactly she started, Cox said she had injections regularly for a period of time to combat signs of aging, which had become a source of insecurity for her. That is until she got a wakeup call in 2017 when she no longer recognized her own face. "[I tried] to keep up with time in a way that was anything other than maintenance. I didn't realize it until one day I kind of stepped back and went, 'Oh s***. I don't look like myself,'" Cox told People in 2019.

Cox immediately stopped her treatments and "had all [her] fillers dissolved," according to her 2017 interview with New Beauty. However, instead of bringing back her insecurity, embracing her natural appearance had the opposite effect. "I feel better because I look like myself," she said. "I think that I now look more like the person that I was." 

As the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, Jamie Lee Curtis witnessed many of the ups and downs of being a Hollywood actor before making her film debut at age 19. However, this didn't make her immune to brutal remarks about her looks. In 1985, one such comment led to an impulsive decision at age 25 that she would end up regretting for the rest of her life. 

The Oscar winner explained in a 2019 interview with Variety that she "naturally had puffy eyes," as seen in a 1980 picture, but a cinematographer on her film "Perfect" apparently took issue with them. "We were shooting a scene in a courtroom with that kind of high, nasty fluorescent light ... and [the cameraman] said, 'I'm not shooting her today. Her eyes are too puffy,'" Curtis recalled. "I was so mortified and so embarrassed and had just so much shame about it that after that movie, I went and had routine plastic surgery to remove the puffiness."

While it did appear to reduce the puffiness, judging by a 1987 portrait, Jamie told Fast Company that she felt the procedure ultimately "didn't work." Still, it had major consequences — taking Vicodin following the surgery resulted in an addiction that she spent the next 10 years or so battling. After getting sober for good in 1999, the "Freaky Friday" star embraced her natural features and used her platform to encourage others to do the same. In 2023, she expressed support for Pamela Anderson after she showed up at Paris Fashion Week barefaced, writing on Instagram, "I am so impressed and floored by this act of courage and rebellion."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

In the mid-2010s, CoolSculpting became Hollywood's new favorite beauty trend, with celebrities such as Khloé Kardashian praising its effectiveness. According to its website, the non-invasive cosmetic procedure "freezes away up to 20%-25% of treated fat permanently." Drawn in by the rave reviews and commercials, supermodel Linda Evangelista decided to see for herself if it was indeed a shortcut to a revenge body, and underwent several CoolSculpting sessions from 2015 to 2016. "CoolSculpting appealed to me because it wasn't radical. It was like a spot treatment," she explained to People in 2022 (via The Los Angeles Times).

However, instead of destroying the fat cells on her face and body, it ended up enlarging them and making them firm — a side effect called paradoxical adipose hyperplasia. Side-by-side photos of Evangelista from 2009 and 2024 show that the procedure changed the shape of her face, but the effects on the rest of her body were devastating as well, as the hardened masses of fat prevented her from moving her arms and legs freely. This not only cut her modeling career short but also led to her going into hiding for the next five years. She eventually resurfaced in 2021 when she announced via Instagram she was suing the makers of CoolSculpting after it left her "brutally disfigured." Evangelista told Vogue, "If I had known side effects may include losing your livelihood and you'll end up so depressed that you hate yourself ... I wouldn't have taken that risk."