Tragic Details About 'Catwoman' Socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein

Every face tells a story and Jocelyn Wildenstein, who died at age 84, was infamously well-known for hers. Notorious for perhaps the most stunning plastic surgery transformation of all time, the Swiss-born woman was given the nickname "Catwoman" because of the similarities between her ever-evolving features that seemed to mimic a cat, herself owning a pet lynx and telling Vanity Fair in 1998, saying that, "The lynx has perfect eyes." Paris Match first reported her death, which was the result of a pulmonary embolism that occurred while she was taking a nap in a Parisian palace.

But outside of Jocelyn's eye-grabbing cosmetic surgeries, she lived a storied life as a socialite who managed to grab headlines not just for every head-turning new procedure that she had done but for all the ways that she was able to afford them. After eloping with billionaire Alec Wildenstein in 1977 and subsequently divorcing him in 1998, she landed a massive settlement that she lived lavishly off of for years. According to The Times, she once spent 10 million on jewelry, had a $60 thousand a year telephone bill, and an annual spending of roughly one million dollars, with a little over half of that spent on food and wine. From Vanity Fair's reported rumors that she once worked for famous Parisian bordello owner Madame Claude to her long-abiding love of Africa, with all of its wildlife and safaris, Jocelyn was a larger-than-life figure. But behind all of the glitz and glamour, those cat-like eyes also tell a story of tragedy.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but Jocelyn Wildenstein gave us a tragic look back at herself before her surgeries in a picture posted to Instagram where she's holding her baby daughter. Wearing a simple v-cut white shirt and a nice red lipstick with her blonde hair gently curled, Jocelyn looks gorgeous and also recognizably human compared to whatever version of beauty she chased as she got older. Jocelyn didn't specify what year the picture was taken, but captioned the post, "Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter #tb in my Parisian home at the Chateau de Marienthal."

Wildenstein's daughter in the photo, Diane Wildenstein, is now 45 years old and lives in London, where she breeds racehorses, an interest that she shared with her father, Alec Wildenstein. Diane has two children, with the eldest being 20 years old, though Jocelyn told The Times in 2023 that she had not seen either of her grandchildren since the eldest was 3 years old, with their estrangement reportedly beginning as soon as she divorced Diane's father.

There is a certain irony to the fact that Jocelyn Wildenstein's first bit of plastic surgery was essentially a date between her and her former husband, Alec Wildenstein. According to Vanity Fair, Diane was the first to point out signs of aging in Alec, telling him that his eyes looked baggy. The two then went in for a his-and-hers eyelift, after which she couldn't stop herself from spending a fortune continuing to nip and tuck. In her Vanity Fair profile, Wildenstein claimed that much of her fixation was because Alec "hate[d] to be with old people." However, she later seemed to clear up the misconception only to wink at the fact that maybe she still believed it, saying, "He never pushed me. ... No, he all the time told me that I look very young," only to add, "Until the day you don't look young enough!"

In the same piece, Alec was quick to lay the blame squarely on Jocelyn, saying, "She was crazy. I would always find out last. She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture. Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn't listen." The fact remains that no matter who was to blame, the complicated relationship resulted in a lifelong obsession, one which a friend of Jocelyn's told Vanity Fair, "I don't think I've known her when she wasn't healing from something," lamenting that, "she mutilated herself."

To add to the messy marriage, and maybe to give some credence to Jocelyn's thoughts that Alec preferred younger women — it was well known that he cheated on her many times. Per Vanity Fair, even when asked point blank if he had other lovers, Alec responded, "Do you want me to brag? I'm a Frenchman." It all fell apart when the two reconvened in New York after Jocelyn's father died. There, Alec told Jocelyn that he had seen "a couple women," after which Jocelyn heartbreakingly still tried to make amends, asking if it was many women or one, saying, "If you don't know exactly what you want, I am I ready to be patient."

In reality, Alec had fallen in love with 21-year-old Yelena Jarikova, who he became a doting supporter of while Jocelyn watched. The same article reports that Alec used all of his connections to turn Jarikova into a supermodel by hiring photographers and asking a friend to give her a modeling contract. As if that wasn't enough to exacerbate some body dysmorphia, Alec then underwent his own transformation to appear younger as he lost almost 60 pounds from working out and becoming a vegetarian, and then, in a biting nod to Jocelyn's increasingly taut face, he underwent liposuction to finish off the new him. Unlike the plastic surgery lies of other celebs, these two were an open book about all the work they had done.

Alec Wildenstein and Jocelyn Wildenstein's divorce would become a headline-generating event that ended with a lucrative outcome for Jocelyn, but created a world that only knew her by the stretch of her face. In regard to the infidelity, The Times reported that Jocelyn said, "He couldn't say I betrayed him; I never betrayed him," so instead, to win the divorce, she said that Alec "hired a publicist and paid a plastic surgeon to certify that [she] completely changed [her] face." In short, Jocelyn said that his reason for the divorce was to "put all the blame on [her] face." 

Per Vanity Fair, at the time, media headlines called Jocelyn "The Bride of Wildenstein," and one headline in London's Sunday Mirror even called her a space alien. To add injury to the insults, Jocelyn was kicked out of her and Alec's beloved residence, Ol Jogi, in Nairobi, where Jocelyn's own mother was living and being treated for Alzheimer's, the combinations to the safes were changed, and the staffers were told to ignore her. Despite the degrading treatment, Jocelyn had the last laugh when the divorce was finalized. It is widely reported that she was paid a lump sum of $2.5 billion and an annual payment of $1 million. Yeah, we don't think she had any regrets about the divorce.

Jocelyn Wildenstein said that after her former husband passed away from prostate cancer, the family of Alec Wildenstein cut her off from her divorce payments in 2015. She told The Times, "Since eight years, they have completely cut me off." The loss of income resulted in Jocelyn having to file for bankruptcy without a dollar to her name. The once-rich celebrity was apparently now just scraping by with the three luxury apartments she owned in Trump Tower having to be repossessed. The Times reported that the loss of net worth resulted in the usually private Jocelyn stepping back into the limelight in a yet-to-be-released HBO documentary from the makers of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." (A family who has famously said yes to plastic surgery.)

After her divorce, she found love again with fashion designer Lloyd Klein, who she began seeing in 2003. He was able to look past her looks, defending Jocelyn to Interview Magazine in 2023 by saying, "She's known for plastic surgery, but I don't know that this is what she should be known for because she did a lot of incredible things in her life. Major, major, major achievements." However, his kind words downplay the fact that in 2016, the two split after an altercation that resulted in both of them receiving assault charges after the police were called to intervene. But, according to People, the judge in the case dropped the charges against Klein, with him subsequently deciding not to press charges on Jocelyn. The two would reunite and remain together until Jocelyn's death, offering a sliver of a happy ending to an incredible but tragic life.