Key Points
Rosie O’Donnell explained on a Substack piece and social media Tuesday that she had a facelift.
The former The View host wrote that she had thought she’d never do such a thing but felt her weight loss made her look like she was “melting.”
After much thought, O’Donnell underwent the procedure, but she said no one has noticed.
Rosie O’Donnell has officially introduced her new look.
The comedian and actress explained Tuesday on social media that she’s undergone a facelift, something that she had previously been against. O’Donnell acknowledged her earlier take on the subject.
“I used to feel very strongly about facelifts. Not casually—morally,” the Sleepless in Seattle star wrote in an abbreviated version of a Substack entry. “I had assigned myself as head of all women who would never-ever. I thought it was a betrayal. Of feminism. Of aging. Of our team of women worldwide.”
Not anymore. O’Donnell wrote that it was weight loss that changed her mind.
“And then I lost 50 pounds…” she noted. “It wasn’t wrinkles— it was gravity. I’d look in the mirror and think, this isn’t aging, this is… melting with intention. I tried to be evolved about it. And say things like, ‘This is natural. This is earned.’ And then… ‘umm how earned does it have to look?’ There’s a point where acceptance starts to feel like lying.”
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The mother of five wrote that her 13-year-old daughter, Clay, whom she shared with late ex-wife Michelle Rounds, told her that she “wouldn’t be able to respect” her if she went through with the procedure, something O’Donnell herself once would have said.
But she came to an important realization.
“If I’m teaching Clay anything,” O’Donnell wrote, “it can’t be that my body belongs to an idea either. Even a good idea. Even feminism. Because that’s still not freedom — that’s just a different authority telling you what you’re allowed to do with your own face. I want them to grow up in a world where they don’t feel like they have to change but also knows they can, if they want to, without losing moral standing in their own life. So in January, I did it.”
She said that she turned to a doctor who had done work on friends of hers who “all still looked like themselves, just like they had recently been told good news.”
Just before the procedure, O’Donnell recalled that she told her doctor she would never wish that they did more.
“I wanted to still be me, just… less haunted. And I do look like me — a slightly more well-rested emotionally stable version of me,” O’Donnell wrote. “And here’s the thing—no one has noticed. Not one person. Not a friend, not a stranger, not even people who owe me compliments. My teen daughter, has not said a word. Nothing. I went through a full existential feminist crisis, had my face and neck surgically altered, and the result is… zippo. Which honestly is the best possible outcome.”
Rosie O’Donnell in 2025
Credit: Neil Mockford/WireImage
O’Donnell wrote too that she’s grateful for the ability to “feel and choose and use my voice,” unlike in the ’90s before she felt comfortable coming out as a lesbian.
She concluded, “This is me.”
Commenters were largely supportive: “Feminism has nothing to do with looking good and rested it’s about self confidence when gravity hits us all,” one wrote.
Added another fan, “This is so vulnerable to admit. You can always change your opinions on things, and I love that you are speaking about it. You look great!”
O’Donnell famously relocated to Ireland in 2025, ahead of President Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. The two have publicly clashed for decades.
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