My Plastic Surgery NIGHTMARE
A MINOR COSMETIC PROCEDURE BEGAN A DECADE OF SUFFERING IN SILENCE FOR THE HOLLYWOOD VETERAN
As the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, Jamie Lee Curtis watched as her parents fought to maintain their appearances in youth-obsessed Hollywood. “I watched my parents get facelifts and neck lifts,” Jamie Lee says. “People weren’t hiring them anymore.”
Despite all she witnessed, Jamie Lee, 62, also fell prey to the promises of plastic surgery. In her 40s, a cameraman complained about her puffy eyes. “I went and had routine plastic surgery to remove the puffiness. They gave me Vicodin as a painkiller for something that wasn’t really painful,” she confides. “It got me addicted to Vicodin.” For the next decade, Jamie Lee took the painkillers in secret, chasing as many as five pills at a time with wine. “I’m 22 years sober now,” she notes.
Swearing off cosmetic procedures also took some time. “I’ve had a little lipo. I’ve had a little Botox. And you know what? None of it works. None of it,” she says. “It’s such a fraud.”
She feels the new trend of fillers and injectables, so-called soft plastic surgery, isn’t any better — especially since it’s being sought by teenagers. “Once you mess with your face, you can’t get it back,” says Jamie Lee, adding that “we are wiping out generations of beauty.”
A REAL ROLE MODEL
At mid-life, Jamie Lee has found herself surprisingly busy. She’s producing and writing new projects. She hosts a podcast,
Good Friends, and is the author of 13 children’s books. Halloween Kills, which she produced and stars in, premiered on Oct. 15. “My creative work is happening and it’s all because of that time running out,” she confides. “My motto is, ‘If not now, when? If not me, who?’ And so now I just go for everything, and I keep going for it.”
She says she’d also be delighted if her cando attitude and natural beauty help inspire the next generation. “I would hope a young person would look at me, with my grey hair and wrinkly face and say, ‘That’s cool that you are who you are.’”