The Real Reason Amanda Peet Will Never Get Plastic Surgery

While it's not unusual for Hollywood actresses to pursue plastic surgery as they age, stars usually remain mum about time under the knife. However, as body confidence becomes an increasingly important issue throughout society, more celebrities are speaking out about why nips and tucks aren't right for them. Actress Amanda Peet, for instance, wants to set an example for her two young daughters "growing up smack in the heart of America's youth-obsessed beauty culture."

As she wrote for Lenny Letter in 2016, her daughters have learned "employability is based on looks" when it comes to TV and film. But while Peet admits she'd love to look younger, she's scared to cross that line. "I'm afraid one visit to a cosmetic dermatologist would be my gateway drug," Peet wrote. "I'd go in for a tiny, circumscribed lift and come out looking like a blowfish. Or someone whose face is permanently pressed up against a glass window. Or like I'm standing in the jet stream of a 747. What's the point of doing it if everyone can tell? I want the thing that makes me look younger, not the thing that makes me look like I did the thing."

Peet admitted, "I've bleached my teeth, dyed my hair, peeled and lasered my face, and tried a slew of age-defying creams," which runs counter to the concept of "aging gracefully." And while she denounced plastic surgery, Peet knowingly has "no business getting on a soapbox in front of my daughters or anyone else."

For actress Amanda Peet, there are many physical qualities she's not pleased with, but she never wants to voluntarily put herself in harm's way. "My daughters would someday learn that the real reason I died was because I voluntarily checked myself into a hospital to get an elective operation that I didn't need so that I could look slightly more attractive to the three people who were paying close enough attention to notice," she wrote for Lenny Letter. Instead, she wants her daughter to look to their aunt, Peet's sister, for guidance.

"She could go on a tirade about how cosmetic surgery is a waste of precious medical resources; how our cultural obsession with beauty and self-improvement is compounded by the fact that we're living in the Age of Digital Narcissism; and how, because of this phenomenon, girls as young as nine — the age of her only daughter and my eldest — show a 'disturbing level of anxiety' about their looks," Peet wrote of her sister, who's a doctor. "She could write about all of this and it wouldn't sound patronizing or hypocritical."

Peet emphasized that, as part of the job, her sister helps students become doctors by making sure they are "paying attention to what really matters." And when you stop to consider that Peet's sister saw her premature gray hair as a "blessing," it sounds like she has something to teach anyone who may need to hear that perspective.

At the time Amanda Peet wrote her Lenny Letter essay, she'd recently been deemed "ineligible" for a role because she wasn't "current" enough. "The train has left the station and I'm one of those moronic stragglers running alongside with her purse caught in the door," she wrote. Of course, such rejection can negatively impact anyone's confidence. Yet while Peet explained she'd never add Botox to her beauty regimen, she'd love "boobs, a gentle six-pack and a perky butt," per a 2009 Self interview.

"If I could choose an ideal body, I'd take Gisele Bündchen's," Peet told Self. "I challenge anyone to say she wouldn't want Gisele's body, deep down. Actually, I'd take a number of people's bodies. I'd take Jennifer Aniston's, too." But as Peet confessed, she doesn't obsess over staying in shape: "To me staying healthy means doing everything in moderation. Eat a lot of greens, but in moderation. Exercise, but in moderation. Drink wine, but in moderation. Sleep as much as you can. And have people around you who are very funny."

Plus, as Peet wrote in Lenny Letter, "we're all going to get wrinkly and die" — perhaps it's time to "move in the direction of acceptance about that." After all, she added, "it's like what they teach you in driving school: if your car skids, turn the wheels right into it. It's counterintuitive, but don't fight the slide." Just go with it.