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WILD TWEAKS

Viral Facelift Actress, 55, Reveals Full Extent of Her Transformation

The actress also blamed a popular anti-aging treatment for making her face appear significantly heavier.

Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

PublishedAug 4, 2026, 2:57 PM EDT

UpdatedAug 4, 2026, 2:57 PM EDT

Updated Aug 4, 2026, 2:57 PM EDTPublished Aug 4, 2026, 2:57 PM EDT

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Actress Denise Richards, 55, opened up about the mistakes, process, and pain behind her viral facelift, including the one facial feature she left untouched.

Richards underwent the transformative facial surgery in late June 2025 and made her before-and-after photos public in March 2026.

On Monday, the Wild Things star detailed her cosmetic tweaks on the Dumb Blonde podcast, telling host Bunnie Xo that, before surgery, she maintained her looks with cosmetic injections, but the results were not always as desired.

“I’ve done a little Botox, and then I did some fillers—I felt like I looked like 300 pounds when I did those,” Richards said.

Bunnie warned listeners about heavy use of dermal fillers, cosmetic injections that add volume.

“For the girls at home that are listening that do get filler, just be careful when you get it in your face because it expands, it gets lumpy,” the 46-year-old said. "It migrates to other places in your face, and then you end up having to get it melted and getting a facelift anyway."

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Bunnie, the ex-wife of Grammy-winning singer Jelly Roll, underwent a facelift in March. Before the surgery, she had years’ worth of dermal filler removed from her face.

During the interview, Richards revealed that she originally visited plastic surgeon Dr. Ben Talei to address her neck, but a friend advised her to look at the bigger picture.

“A friend of mine, she’s very well known, and she’s not public about [her facelift], and she said to me, ‘You have to do the whole thing.’”

The comment, and her trust in Dr. Talei, led Richards to undergo near-complete facial rejuvenation with the surgeon, except for a single feature.

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“I just said, ‘Do what you want to do,’” Richards recalled. “I was terrified, but he did everything. He did the neck, the lower face, the upper [face], the brow lift. The only thing he didn’t do was my lower [eyelids]. He did my upper [eyelids]. But I mean, he did the whole thing.”

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Richards spent a week at a recovery center, which she thought was a good choice.

“I’m so glad that I did. I don’t know how anyone can take care of themselves after,” she said. “It’s scary. You look frightening.”

The two women also got honest as they commiserated about the painful recovery process.

“I don’t know if you had the brow lift, but that is no freaking joke with the pain,” Richards said about her temporal brow lift. “It’s a headache that you can’t explain.”

“I wasn’t prepared for that pain,” Richards explained, adding, “And I feel I have a high tolerance of pain.“

Bunnie shared that she felt like she was “choking” because of the pain in her neck post-surgery—a side effect not shared by her podcast guest.

“I think my head hurt so bad I didn’t notice the neck,” Richards said.

Even though she could still not feel the area under her chin, the actress did not have regrets.

“It was the best thing I did for myself,” Richards said, noting that her results have only gotten better with time. “It’s like your face settles or something.”

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She wanted to be open about her plastic surgery, recalling how at 19 she was more private about her breast implant procedure.

“I never said anything to anyone, and I think the very first time it was even out was [when] Howard Stern asked me a question,” Richards said.

Adding, “And some people were saying, ‘Well, you never spoke about it.’ I’m like, ‘Well, no one ever flat out asked me.”

Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

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