Rosie O’Donnell has plenty to say right now — about Donald Trump, about feminism, and about the surgical procedure she spent years opposing on principle before quietly going ahead with it anyway.
At 64, the comedian and actress is in a remarkably open mood. She has been sharing before-and-after photos, writing confessional essays, 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 more layered 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 view of him hasn’t budged.
Drawing from her decades of life in New York, she recalled watching Trump’s rise and fall long before he ever entered politics. She remembered times when his planes were seized from LaGuardia Airport runways, when he was drowning in financial trouble, and when he allegedly phoned media outlets pretending to be his own spokesman.
Then came her sharpest take. ‘He is a conman, he is a narcissist, and he is a psychopath, if you ask me.’ The remark quickly spread online, but it was far from the only thing O’Donnell was speaking publicly about that week.
In recent months, she has also been surprisingly candid about a cosmetic procedure she spent years insisting she would never have. Through an essay posted on her Substack, she revealed that she went through with a facelift.
O’Donnell didn’t ease into the admission. She opened by describing her former stance on cosmetic surgery as a moral position — not just a personal preference, but a firm 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 had considered getting one a betrayal: of feminism, of aging naturally, of a collective solidarity among women that 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 things. ‘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 left behind had given her face a downward, heavy look that didn’t reflect how she actually felt inside. In Ireland, where she had been living for over a year, strangers kept coming up to her with worried expressions.
‘Are you alright, darling? You look so sad,’ they would say. Her response every single time: ‘It’s just my face. I lost 50 pounds. I’m on Mounjaro.’
Eventually, she found herself explaining her appearance to strangers in a foreign country, walking them through the weight loss, the medication, the surgery. It seemed easier, she figured, to just be upfront with everyone.
She tried to make peace with the way she looked. She told herself it was natural, that it was something to be proud of. Then she began questioning just how much it actually had to show. ‘There’s a point where acceptance starts to feel like lying,’ she wrote.
As she weighed the decision, she spent months gathering information, consulting friends, and going back and forth on it repeatedly.
What slowed her down wasn’t her own uncertainty. It was her 13-year-old daughter, Clay, who has autism. When Clay found out O’Donnell was thinking about having the procedure, her reaction was direct: ‘You earned your wrinkles.’
O’Donnell called it rude — and right. But the line that truly stopped her cold 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.’
In the end, she landed on one conclusion: if she was teaching Clay anything at all, it couldn’t be that her body belonged to an idea — even a worthwhile 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 a single request: ‘I will never say, I wish you did more.’
She wanted the subtlest result possible. She wanted to still look like herself. She got exactly what she asked for.
For roughly six months, nobody noticed. Not friends, not strangers, not her daughter. In an Access Hollywood interview, she reflected on the silence with visible 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 matter-of-fact: ‘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 first image, her face looks noticeably lean from the significant weight loss, with clearly sagging skin.
The second 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 didn’t fully go away. In her Substack essay, O’Donnell wrestled openly with the cost — both in dollars and in ethics.
‘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 to younger women directly in the Access Hollywood interview, stopping well short of giving any kind of endorsement.
Everyone has to figure it out on their own, she said — but she pushed back hard 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 remain that way.
The part O’Donnell seems to find most satisfying — and most amusing — is the one that brings the whole story back around.
After months of internal struggle, a feminist reckoning, a standoff with her teenage daughter, and a surgery that cost more than a car, the outcome was met with complete and utter silence from everyone in her life.
Clay, who had promised she would lose all respect for her mother, never said a 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 dry humor she has always been known 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 opinions about the president, a new face she mostly keeps to herself, and a teenager who still hasn’t noticed either.
