Jamie Lee Curtis' Honest Reflections On Plastic Surgery Are So Refreshing

In "Freaky Friday," Jamie Lee Curtis turned in one of her most nimble performances as a harried, middle-aged mother who wakes up in the body of her teenage daughter, played by Lindsay Lohan. She leaned in all the way, adopting the elastic slang and dramatic sulks of adolescence. She got her ear pierced, flirted with Chad Michael Murray (who was in full heartthrob mode at the time), and strutted down the street in knee-high boots — proving that youth is as much about attitude as it is appearance. But offscreen, there was a time when Curtis sought a more literal transformation.

At 25, Curtis was filming the 1985 movie "Perfect," when a cinematographer refused to shoot her coverage. "Yeah, I'm not shooting her today," he reportedly said. "Her eyes are baggy." (via 60 Minutes). The comment cut deeply. "I was so mortified and so embarrassed and had just so much shame about it," Curtis recalled in the interview. Soon after filming wrapped, she underwent plastic surgery to reduce the puffiness under her eyes — a feature she'd had since childhood.

"I regretted it immediately and have kind of sort of regretted it since," the actor reflected. "That's just not what you want to do when you're 25 or 26." Since then, she's become one of the celebs that aren't playing by society's beauty rules (and thank God for that). She turned a moment of shame into a long-standing critique, having spent decades calling out beauty standards and the machinery that keeps them afloat. As she told 60 Minutes, "I've become a really public advocate to say to women you're gorgeous and you're perfect the way you are."

Throughout her career, Jamie Lee Curtis has become one of the celebs that are confronting aging with confidence. Speaking to Fast Company, she lamented, "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. She has been through it, and come out the other side. "Once you mess with your face, you can't get it back," she cautioned.

Her own foray into plastic surgery left her with insight on the risks to know about before getting plastic surgery, but she's also especially wary of the psychic toll exacted by social media — its distortions and sustained assault on the idea of being enough. "We just don't know the longitudinal effect, mentally, spiritually, and physically, on a generation of young people who are in agony because of social media, because of the comparisons to others," she said. "All of us who are old enough know that it's all a lie. It's a real danger to young people."

But as the child of movie stars — Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, in fact — her clarity is also inherited. "I watched my parents get facelifts and necklifts," she told the "People of the '90s" podcast. "I watched their work diminish. I watched their fame not diminish." The contradiction of aging stardom never left her. "It's a hard business, and it's all about what you look like," she added. And yet, here she is: still working, and still absolutely fabulous.