Rosie O’Donnell Gets Candid About Donald Trump and the Cosmetic Procedure She Once Swore She’d Never Get

At 64, the comedian and actress is in an unusually candid mood. She has been posting before-and-after photos, publishing confessional essays, and sitting for red-carpet interviews where she pulls no punches — about the president, or about her own face. The full story, though, is more complicated than any headline can hold.

She Did Not Hold Back on Trump

At a recent red-carpet appearance covered by Variety, O’Donnell was asked about President Donald Trump. The pair have traded public barbs for years, and O’Donnell made it clear that her opinion has not changed.

Drawing on her decades living in New York, she recalled watching Trump’s ups and downs long before he entered politics. She recalled periods when his planes were repossessed from LaGuardia Airport runways, when he faced financial difficulties, and when he allegedly called media outlets pretending to be his own publicist.

Then she delivered her bluntest assessment. “He is a conman, he is a narcissist, and he is a psychopath, if you ask me.” The comment quickly attracted attention online, but it was not the only topic O’Donnell was discussing publicly this week.

A Decision She Once Opposed

In recent months, O’Donnell has also been unusually open about a cosmetic procedure she spent years believing she would never have. Through an essay published on her Substack, she revealed that she underwent a facelift.

O’Donnell did not ease into the confession gently. She opened by describing her former position on cosmetic surgery as a moral one, not a preference, a 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 believed getting one was a betrayal: of feminism, of natural aging, of a collective female solidarity she had appointed herself to protect.

Then she lost 50 pounds. The weight loss — she has since been open about using Mounjaro — changed the equation. “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 marionette lines left by the weight loss had given her face a downward cast that did not match how she actually felt. In Ireland, where she has been residing for over a year now, strangers kept approaching her with concern.

“Are you alright, darling? You look so sad,” they would say. Her answer every time: “It’s just my face. I lost 50 pounds. I’m on Mounjaro.”

Eventually, she found herself explaining her face to strangers in a foreign country, telling them about the weight loss, the medication, the surgery. It seemed simpler, she reasoned, to just tell everyone.

She tried to make peace with how she looked. She told herself it was natural, that it was earned. Then she started asking how “earned” it actually had to look. “There’s a point where acceptance starts to feel like lying,” she wrote.

As she considered the procedure, she spent months gathering information, talking with friends, and repeatedly changing her mind.

Her Daughter’s Reaction

What slowed her down was not her own ambivalence. It was her 13-year-old daughter, Clay, who has autism. When Clay found out O’Donnell was considering the procedure, the response was blunt: “You earned your wrinkles.”

O’Donnell called it rude — and correct. But the line that actually stopped her was the one that followed: “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.”

Eventually, she arrived at a conclusion: if she was teaching Clay anything, it could not be that her body belonged to an idea — even a good idea, 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.

She Went Through With It and Told No One

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 one request: “I will never say, ‘I wish you did more.'”

She wanted the most minimal result possible. She wanted to still look like herself. She got 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 some 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 straightforward: “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 before image, her face is noticeably thin from significant weight loss, with visibly sagging skin.

The after shows firm, natural-looking results — still unmistakably her, just different. She has continued sharing that journey on the platform since.

The Guilt She Kept

Even after coming forward, the discomfort did not entirely lift. In her Substack essay, O’Donnell grappled openly with the cost — both financial and ethical.

“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 addressed the younger generation directly in the Access Hollywood interview, stopping well short of a recommendation.

Everyone has to figure it out for themselves, she said — but she pushed back against buying into “the feminine beauty myth.” Whatever someone chooses to do with their body and their face, she said, is a personal decision, and it should stay that way.

The Punchline She Did Not Plan

The detail O’Donnell seems to find most satisfying — and most funny — is the one that brings the whole story full circle.

After months of internal debate, a feminist crisis, a standoff with her teenage daughter, and a surgical procedure that cost more than a car, the result has been met with complete and total silence from everyone in her life.

Clay, who promised she would lose all respect for her mother, has not 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 summed it up with the kind of deadpan she has always been good at: “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 is happier than she says she has been in years. She has opinions about the president, a new face she mostly keeps to herself, and a teenager who still has not noticed either.