Denise Richards’ before-and-after photos are making the rounds again, with some viewers comparing her transformation to a “head transplant” straight out of the horror movie The Substance.
The 55-year-old actress had her facelift in June 2025, then shared the results earlier this year. This week, she explained why she chose to speak publicly about a procedure she had once sworn she would never undergo.
Highlights
- Denise Richards said she revealed her June 2025 facelift after her estranged husband mentioned it in court.
- Before-and-after photos drew “head transplant” jokes, while other viewers praised the result.
- Her surgeon revealed the result was due to many procedures performed at once, including a fat transfer from her thighs to her face.
Richards said her estranged husband, Aaron Phypers, had brought it up during court proceedings “on purpose.” Although reporters in the room did not publish the remark, she decided she wanted the story to come from her.
“I didn’t want to give him that power,” she said last Tuesday (October 13) on The Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg Show.
Denise Richards’ facelift has gone viral thanks to her latest podcast appearance
Richards had reportedly spent years resisting the idea of a facelift.
Her appearance had been part of her career since Wild Things and her turn as a Bond girl in The World Is Not Enough, and she feared what could happen if surgery changed the face audiences recognized.
“I always said I would never get a facelift, because that’s my face. This is how I make my money,” she told Allure on March 20. She considered it for two years before deciding she wanted to “put things back up, where they were before.”
She underwent the procedure in June 2025. The following month, Phypers filed for divorce. As their separation moved through court, he referred to the surgery, according to Richards.
“I was so pleasantly surprised because there was media in there that didn’t print it, which was nice,” she said on the October 13 podcast. Still, she felt the subject had already been put in someone else’s hands.
After Richards’ Allure interview, Beverly Hills surgeon Dr. Ben Talei shared standardized before-and-after photographs, showing her face from multiple angles without makeup or filters.
“But I’m so glad that I’ve been open about it. I didn’t know how people would react, but I want to know what everyone’s doing, which peptides, what this, what that,” she told McCarthy.
“And plus, I feel he did such a great job on me that I wanted to share the information.”
Richards had many procedures done at the same time, including transferring fat into her face
Viewers wasted no time comparing older images with her current appearance, and the comments ranged from admiration to disbelief.
“The new face lifts are literally insane, it's like basically a head transplant,” one X user wrote. Another joked that the surgeon had “Yanked her back to 1998.”
Others praised the fact that they could still recognize her.
“She still looks like herself, only younger,” one person wrote. “I’m not a fan of cosmetic surgery but the doctor did a good job on her.”
The photographs showed the result of several procedures performed together.
According to Talei, he carried out a facelift and a temporal brow lift, along with a conservative upper eyelid procedure and a lift at the outer corners of Richards’ mouth. He also transferred fat taken from her thighs to restore volume in her face.
Richards had initially considered work on her neck alone. She later described soreness in her thighs and said the brow lift was the most painful part of her recovery. Within roughly two weeks, she was going out again.
In an interview published by The Atlantic on April 23, 2026, Talei said work comparable to Richards’ typically cost in the mid-$200,000s.
He also said daily inquiries to his office had risen from around 10 to 20 to approximately 100 after her before-and-after photographs were released in March.
Richards joined other stars who have spoken openly about their facelifts
Richards was not Talei’s first famous patient to discuss the experience.
At the October 1, 2023, Daytime Beauty Awards, singer Sia revealed that he had performed her facelift while presenting him with an award. When people told her she looked nice her answer was: “Dr. Ben Talei, facelift.”
Sia’s result helped persuade comedian Kathy Griffin to see the same surgeon.
On the August 28, 2025, episode of Dear Chelsea, Griffin said, “I went to Sia’s doctor.” She described the discomfort of her own recovery and credited the work with giving her jawline back. “I’m not trying to look, you know, forty,” she said.
On the November 10, 2025, episode of Good Guys, Griffin confirmed said her third facelift cost $218,000. “It was not cheap,” she said, joking that she would need to perform at least two shows to pay for it.
Similarly, Kris Jenner received a similar wave of scrutiny when she appeared with a refreshed look in 2025.
Her surgeon was Dr. Steven Levinet. In an August 26, 2025, interview with Vogue Arabia, Jenner said she had undergone an earlier facelift about 15 years before and wanted a “refresh.”
“I decided to do this facelift because I want to be the best version of myself,” she said. “For me, this is aging gracefully. It’s my version.”
"20 years younger." Fans were pleasantly surprised with the results
