The One Cosmetic Procedure Eva Mendes Admits To Getting

Eva Mendes' debuted an unrecognizable transformation on "Today" that sparked speculation about whether the "Hitch" star has gone under the knife or the needle. Mendes has addressed plastic surgery rumors before, and it turns out that she has had some work done.

Mendes seemingly had conflicting feelings about plastic surgery in the past. In 2007, the Irish Examiner quoted her as saying that she was personally against getting plastic surgery because she found it too "invasive." But by the following year, she had changed her mind. "When the time comes, I'm going to nip it and tuck it all," she said in an interview with Star magazine (via the Irish Examiner).

Mendes has also confessed to disliking her face. In a since-deleted 2021 Instagram post, she revealed that she had once been hyper-critical of the way it looked in the movie "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," which was shot almost a decade earlier. Reflecting on the nonexistent flaws that she saw back then, she wrote (via Glamour), "Now I wish I still had that 'weird' face and odd 'bone structure.'" On X, formerly known as Twitter, some users reacted to her "Today" interview by suggesting that she has turned to using Botox and fillers to turn back the clock and regain that shape. Mendes hasn't addressed the speculation as of this writing, but she's admitted to experimenting with a different procedure: the thread lift.

In 2020, Eva Mendes shared an Instagram photo of herself that was quite disturbing: She had seven long needles jabbed into the skin below her chin. She revealed that she was getting a mono-thread procedure from a friend, Dr. Marina Vergara. Mendes jokingly described the dermatologist's clinic as "A home where you can relax while being tortured by the best of the best."

Vergara told People that a mono-thread lift is performed using needles and dissolvable threads that the body eventually absorbs. In addition to tightening the skin, the threads promote collagen production. However, Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Deepak Raj Dugar suggested that laser treatments are more effective at firming up skin on the neck. "Threads in the neck are much less studied and don't have widely confirmed evidence of much effect," he told Real Self.

The area of Mendes' face that social media users fixated on after her "Today" appearance was not her neck but her cheeks. Mendes doesn't even walk red carpets with her husband, Ryan Gosling, anymore after she quit acting to be a stay-at-home mom, which is something she discusses in her interview. But one fan feared that her decision to shun the spotlight is also linked to people commenting on her appearance. "The way y'all talking about Eva Mendes's face ... she bout to go back into her hole and we ain't gonna see her again for another 10 years," they tweeted.