Rosie O’Donnell has plenty to talk about right now — Donald Trump, feminism, and a surgical procedure she spent years firmly opposing before quietly going ahead with it.
At 64, the comedian and actress is in a remarkably open mood. She has been sharing before-and-after photos, writing confessional pieces, and showing up to red-carpet events where she holds nothing back — about the president, or about her own appearance. The full picture, though, is messier than any single headline can capture.
At a recent red-carpet appearance covered by Variety, O’Donnell was asked about President Donald Trump. The two have been exchanging public jabs for years, and O’Donnell made it clear her feelings have not softened.
Drawing from her decades living in New York, she talked about watching Trump’s rise and fall long before he ever entered politics. She recalled times when his planes were seized from LaGuardia Airport runways, when he was drowning in financial trouble, and when he allegedly rang up media outlets pretending to be his own spokesperson.
Then came her sharpest take. ‘He is a conman, he is a narcissist, and he is a psychopath, if you ask me.’ The remark spread fast online, but it was not the only thing O’Donnell was putting out there that week.
In recent months, she has also been surprisingly candid about a cosmetic procedure she spent years convinced she would never pursue. Through an essay on her Substack, she revealed that she had a facelift.
O’Donnell did not ease her way into the admission. She opened by describing her past stance on cosmetic surgery as something moral, not just a personal preference — a principle.
‘I used to feel very strongly about facelifts,’ she wrote. ‘Not casually — morally. I had assigned myself as head of all women who would never — ever.’ She believed going through with one was a betrayal: of feminism, of aging naturally, of a collective female solidarity she had taken it upon herself to defend.
Then she lost 50 pounds. The weight loss — she has since been open about using Mounjaro — shifted everything. ‘It wasn’t wrinkles — it was gravity,’ she wrote. ‘I’d look in the mirror and think — this isn’t aging, this is melting with intention.’
After the weight loss, the deep lines it left behind gave her face a downward pull that did not reflect how she actually felt inside. In Ireland, where she has been living for more than a year, strangers kept stopping her out of concern.
‘Are you alright, darling? You look so sad,’ they would say. Her reply every time: ‘It’s just my face. I lost 50 pounds. I’m on Mounjaro.’
Eventually, she found herself explaining her appearance to strangers in another country, walking them through the weight loss, the medication, the surgery. It seemed easier, she figured, to just come out and say it.
She tried to make peace with the way she looked. She told herself it was natural, that it had been earned. Then she started questioning just how ‘earned’ it really needed to appear. ‘There’s a point where acceptance starts to feel like lying,’ she wrote.
As she weighed the decision, she spent months gathering information, talking to friends, and going back and forth repeatedly.
What slowed her down was not her own uncertainty. It was her 13-year-old daughter, Clay, who has autism. When Clay found out O’Donnell was thinking about the procedure, her reaction was blunt: ‘You earned your wrinkles.’
O’Donnell called it rude — and right. But the line that truly stopped her was the one that came next: ‘I wouldn’t be able to respect you if you did it.’
‘That one… landed,’ O’Donnell wrote. ‘And she sounded exactly like me. Like my younger, more certain, more morally rigid self had somehow moved into my house and was now judging my essence.’
Eventually, she landed on a conclusion: if she was teaching Clay anything at all, it could not be that her body belonged to an idea — even a worthy one, 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,’ she wrote.
In January 2026, O’Donnell had what she describes as a lower deep plane facelift. Before going under, she grabbed her doctor’s hand and made one request: ‘I will never say, I wish you did more.’
She wanted the most understated outcome possible. She wanted to still look like herself. She got exactly what she asked for.
For around six months, nobody noticed. Not friends, not strangers, not her daughter. In an Access Hollywood interview, she reflected on the silence with some amusement: ‘No one noticed for like six months. And then I wrote the piece, and now everyone wants to talk about it.’
On the facelift itself, she was straightforward: ‘I had to wrestle with myself as a feminist to do it, and it was a lot of money, but I’m very happy with the result.’
On May 26, 2026, she posted a side-by-side photo grid on Instagram showing her before and after. In the before image, her face looks noticeably thin from significant weight loss, with visible skin sagging.
The after image shows firm, natural-looking results — still unmistakably her, just different. She has continued sharing that journey on the platform ever since.
Even after going public, the discomfort did not fully fade. In her Substack essay, O’Donnell wrestled openly with the cost — both financially and ethically.
‘It cost more money than I have ever paid for a car,’ she wrote, ‘such is my privileged place in this world. And that feels almost shameful to me.’
She also spoke directly to the younger generation in the Access Hollywood interview, stopping well short of telling anyone what to do.
Everyone has to figure it out on their own, she said — but she pushed back against buying into ‘the feminine beauty myth.’ Whatever someone decides to do with their body and their face, she said, is a personal choice, and it should stay that way.
The detail O’Donnell seems to find most satisfying — and most amusing — is the one that brings the whole story back around.
After months of internal debate, a feminist reckoning, a standoff with her teenage daughter, and a surgery that cost more than a car, the outcome was met with complete silence from everyone around her.
Clay, who promised she would lose all respect for her mother, has not said a single word. ‘Luckily, after I did it, they didn’t notice,’ O’Donnell said. ‘So, I hope they’re not watching Access Hollywood.’
In her Substack essay, she wrapped it up with the kind of deadpan delivery she has always had a gift for: ‘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,’ she added. ‘I didn’t disappear, I didn’t become someone else — I just stopped arguing with the mirror.’
At 64, Rosie O’Donnell says she is happier than she has been in years. She has strong opinions about the president, a new face she mostly keeps to herself, and a teenager who still has not noticed either.
