Celebs Who Went Into Hiding After Plastic Surgeries Gone Wrong

Celebrities going under the knife in an effort to maintain or enhance their already inhuman beauty is nothing new. Hollywood is a tough business, and the pressure to achieve physical perfection is intense. For some in the fame game, those plastic surgeries have reportedly gone horribly awry, leaving them dodging the spotlight instead of basking in it. Here are some celebs who've allegedly hidden from the limelight after cosmetic procedures gone wrong.

Tara Reid's botched boob job was so notorious that the Sharknado (2013) actress found herself better known for her surgical flub than her memorable performances in films such as American Pie (1999) and The Big Lebowski (1998). As she told Access Hollywood in 2006, she "became known as having the ugliest breast in the world. It was all over those websites. Millions of them." Reid admitted that the reason she first decided to have an enhancement done in the first place was that her breasts weren't equally sized, and she'd undergone some body changes that made them less perky than the movie-going world might have been used to seeing on-screen.

"I originally did it because I had one breast bigger than the other. But I also gained and lost weight, so they were getting saggy, and in Hollywood, you have to look great," she said. Reid blames the practitioner who performed the procedure for giving her an "irregular like a goose-shape egg" breast, but she also blamed herself for not doing more research on the doctor's surgical skills. "I had heard this person was good," she said. "It's Hollywood. It's Beverly Hills. You think everyone is pretty good here, and obviously I didn't do the research."

In addition to breast implants, she also had liposuction done to her abdominal region and described the results as "look[ing] almost like a cobblestone road. It was very irregular and bumpy with dents and high points." Reid subsequently disappeared from movies for several years and had corrective surgeries done to fix the problems. "I was embarrassed," she explained of her decision to hide. "I didn't want people to see what I really looked like. I had to keep it covered." Now that she's nipped the problem in the bud, she's happy with what she sees in the mirror again.

Though Axl Rose won't comment on his new face, plastic surgery experts speculate that the Guns N' Roses singer has had at the very least Botox, as well as possible cheek implants and a facelift. When he emerged in 2002 after almost seven years out of the spotlight, fan reactions were less than positive to his new mug. This may have played a role in why Rose didn't make many public appearances since—and why Chinese Democracy took so long to hit shelves, because, well, with no face to promote it, it's not going to sell itself.

Pop star Janet Jackson has been very candid about the fact that she had a nose job done when she was just 16, and she publicly left open the possibility of returning to the operating room to get more work done. In 2014, after being absent from the public eye for more than a year, she emerged at a Vogue magazine event in Dubai and shocked fans with her altered appearance. She was rumored to have undergone a facelift which made her eyebrows dramatically sharper, and her cheekbones even more pronounced. Experts also suspected she had routine botox injections, based on her so-called "bunny nose."

Her makeup artist told Extra TV that it was merely makeup that was responsible for her drastically altered appearance, but celebrity surgeons, including Botched and The Real Housewives of Orange County's Dr. Terry DuBrow told the Orange County Register that she is "a great example of how plastic surgery has changed through the years. If you look at the earlier photos of her nose and breasts, she has an artificial look to those areas. Now, either through the natural relaxation of time or modern day revisions, she looks more beautiful and more natural, consistent with how we do modern procedures." One thing's for sure: she's not hiding anymore.

In the '80s, Mickey Rourke was a highly in-demand and respected actor who'd starred in hits such as Diner (1982), Barfly (1987), Year of the Dragon (1985), and Angel Heart (1987). But he fell out of the limelight after he took on a second career as an amateur boxer and suffered some catastrophic injuries to his face, which were only worsened by surgical intervention. He told the Daily Mail in 2009 that his nose had been broken twice in the course of his pugilistic career, and that his cheekbone were shattered. He underwent five surgeries to "rebuild his nose" and one on his cheekbone and said he attributes the visible alterations of his famous face to those operations.

"Most of it was to mend the mess of my face because of the boxing, but I went to the wrong guy to put my face back together," he explained. He told CNN he lived in "a state of shame" as the roles stopped rolling in due to his facial disfigurement. Once Darren Aronofsky decided to buck all expectations and cast Rourke in his Oscar-nominated title role in The Wrestler, though, Rourke re-emerged to grand critical favor and reclaimed his place as a top-billed star in films like Iron Man 2, The Expendables, and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Even with his career's second wind in motion, though, Rourke is reportedly still putting his mug on the chopping block. A source told Page Six in 2015, "he's hooked on surgery" and "wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror and doesn't like what he sees."

In October 2014, Renee Zellweger made a rare public appearance at the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards with a dramatically different face. The actress' eyes, which were once her signature look, appeared unnaturally wider, and her skin more taut than ever. Though she denied getting any work done, a cosmetic procedure or five would explain why she flew under the radar (and away from cameras) for over a year.

Las Vegas staple Wayne Newton is almost never spotted in public. That's probably because if his face got lifted any higher, NASA would start studying it. The singer was spotted in court in May 2012 for a contract dispute after nearly a year of radio silence, looking dramatically different (and puffy, stretched, and just...off). Newton denies getting any plastic surgery, but if you have eyes, it's easy to see just why he would've gone into hiding.

Lil' Kim has become almost unrecognizable from the iconic '90s rap siren she once was, and, while she did admit to having a nose job in 2005, she refuses to admit that plastic surgery has had anything to do with her latest looks. In fact, she got quite defensive in 2013 when Rolling Out magazine tried to broach the subject with her.

An expert who studied her remarkably different appearance opined to Us Weekly that she may not only have bleached her skin to create a lighter shade, but she also appears to have had eye surgery and jawline injections. Another expert told Page Six she may have become addicted to having plastic surgery. She was reportedly courted to join the cast of Celebrity Big Brother U.K. with the hopes that she would finally address the subject of her surgical history on the show.

In 2003, the New York Daily News reports that Barry Manilow was pictured leaving a clinic wearing a wig, sunglasses, and a lot of bandages. He went MIA for a bit after that, then emerged on a TV special months later with a tight-looking face and a smaller nose, much to the dismay of fans who loved his original profile. Manilow concocted a long, side-eye-worthy story about breaking his nose and needing corrective surgery, but that didn't explain the puffy cheeks and complete, unsettling lack of wrinkles.

Meg Ryan's appearance has long been the subject of scrutiny over which procedures she's had done to her once-iconic face. Experts believe she's had everything from laser resurfacings to filler injections to her cheeks and lips to eye lifts to a nose job, based on how drastically different she looks in up-close shots when she does make a rare public appearance.

While Ryan didn't outright deny the allegations, she did tell Porter magazine (via ET Online), "I love my age. I love my life right now. I love what I know about. I love the person I've become, the one I've evolved into. In my life, I've been scrappy as hell, but I feel easy with things now. I think that comes with age." She also said she rejects "these conversations about looks and hair color and our roots" because "it's interesting and funny for five minutes, but it's not that interesting." Even so, the former A-lister has kept a curiously quiet career and a very private personal life since her face started to show signs of change.

Gwyneth Paltrow might be a figurehead of the au naturale women's lifestyle movement, but once upon a time, the Oscar-winning actress also turned to some medical intervention to grapple with her perceived imperfections, and she was not happy with the results. In 2013, she told Harper's Bazaar that while she might be willing to "try anything" to achieve the optimal level of beauty when the time comes, there's one procedure she wouldn't touch again: Botox. "I won't do Botox again, because I looked crazy," she told the magazine. "I looked like Joan Rivers!" The public never got a glimpse of that sight because she managed to keep away from the paparazzi until the anti-wrinkle treatment faded.

Melanie Griffith was an icon of the late '80s film scene, but her career took a major pause for several years in the mid-2000s after she began to receive some serious backlash over her dramatically altered appearance. She told US Weekly in 2012, "Most people are telling me I look horrible. The tweets I get are really nasty...I don't know if I look that great [but] I work out a lot. I have a trainer that I [work with] four times a week, and I do hot yoga." Indeed, she's widely been criticized for having a so-called "trout pout" with the appearance of her lips.

Griffith's first encounter with reconstructive surgery came from an on-set animal attack she endured at just 14 years old, while filming with a real lion for 1981's Roar. But the procedures reportedly didn't stop there, as experts believe she's had a facelift and eye area lifts as well as fillers, and she herself has played into rumors that she had breast augmentation done in the early '90s.

"If I Could Turn Back Time" crooner Cher had to come to grips with being displeased with a cosmetic surgery. According to People magazine, the iconic singer admitted to having had several cosmetic procedures done after watching herself in the 1985 movie Mask. "I can look better than this," she told the magazine of her decision to have her nose, teeth, and breasts worked on. Of those operations, it was the latter that made her unhappy. "My breast operations were a nightmare. They were really botched in every way. If anything, they were worse after than before," she said.

She didn't shy away from the big screen for long. Two years later, she made a triumphant return to movies, including The Witches of Eastwick (1987) and Suspect (1987), and she even won an Oscar for her turn as Loretta Castorini in 1987's Moonstruck.

Wayne Newton spent a lot of his life in the literal spotlight as a Las Vegas performance icon, but he curiously withdrew from the stage until 2012, when had to make a courtroom appearance in Sin City, which all-but confirmed in the court of public opinion that he'd been under the knife with unsuccessful results. Outsiders speculated that his appearance indicated he'd had a botched face lift and brow lift, but the "Danke Shoen" crooner has kept his lips sealed on whether he went under the knife or not and blames his retreat from Hollywood on the types of roles he was being offered.

Lara Flynn Boyle was once a staunch opponent of plastic surgery, even telling Conan O'Brien in 2005 (via E! Online) that she would like to have breast implants in theory but wouldn't do it because she'd "been such an advocate against it" before. However, when the former Twin Peaks star stepped out in 2014, she was widely criticized for a dramatically plumper and less natural face. Botched doc Paul Nassif said that by 2010, she appeared to have had a nose job, facial lift procedures, and lip augmentation. Boyle has kept an extremely low profile since so much attention has been focused on her face.