Jamie Lee Curtis is getting brutally honest about the moment that pushed her into plastic surgery, and why she’s regretted it ever since.
The Oscar-winning actress recently revealed that she went under the knife at just 25 years old after a harsh remark on the set of the 1985 film Perfect left her shaken.
Speaking to 60 Minutes on May 11, Curtis, now 66, shared how a cinematographer’s brutal comment about her appearance made a lasting impact. “He was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not shooting her today. Her eyes are baggy,’” she recalled. “And I was 25, so for him to say that, it was very embarrassing.”
That single line was enough to drive her straight to a surgeon’s office the moment filming wrapped. But instead of finding confidence, Curtis found regret. “As soon as the movie finished, I ended up having some plastic surgery,” she admitted. “That’s just not what you want to do when you’re 25 or 26. And I regretted it immediately and have kind of sort of regretted it since.”
Jamie Lee Curtis’ plastic surgery regret isn’t just about one procedure gone wrong, it’s about how that decision clashed with who she is today. As someone who’s become a vocal supporter of natural beauty and aging with confidence, the choice she made back then feels out of step with her current values. “I’ve become a really public advocate to say to women: you’re gorgeous and you’re perfect the way you are. So yeah, it was not a good thing for me to do.”
But the story doesn’t stop with cosmetic regret. Curtis also opened up about how that surgery triggered something deeper: a dependency on painkillers. “I became very enamored with the warm bath of an opiate,” she said. “You know, drank a little bit … never to excess, never any big public demonstrations. I was very quiet, very private about it, but it became a dependency for sure.”
This isn’t the first time Curtis has shared her struggles. Back in 2021, she told Fast Company how plastic surgery directly led to her addiction to Vicodin. “I tried plastic surgery, and it didn’t work. It got me addicted to Vicodin,” she said. Now 22 years sober, she continues to speak out against the dangerous culture of appearance obsession.
“The current trend of fillers and procedures, and this obsession with filtering, and the things that we do to adjust our appearance on Zoom are wiping out generations of beauty,” she said. “Once you mess with your face, you can’t get it back.”
Curtis also reflected on the impact her famous parents, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, had on her perception of aging. On the PEOPLE in the ’90s podcast, she recalled watching them both go through cosmetic procedures, including facelifts and neck lifts, and how that shaped her understanding of the industry’s beauty standards. “I watched their work diminish; I watched their fame not diminish,” she explained. “And the contradiction of a lot of fame but not a lot of work is really hard to navigate for people.”
For Jamie Lee Curtis, the pressure to look perfect started young, hit hard, and came with lasting consequences. But with every honest interview, she’s using her story to remind others that real beauty doesn’t come from a scalpel, it comes from self-acceptance.
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