Over the summer, a plastic surgeon hung old movie stills of Denise Richards on his operating room wall. There she was in Stormship Troopers, blue-eyed with the kind of bold brows and piecey layers that defined the ’90s. In a way, she defined the ’90s. Richards was a sex symbol in a decade that absolutely idolized sex symbols, the star of Wild Things, a Bond girl, and also had cameos on almost every era-defining show—Seinfeld, Beverly Hills 90210, Saved by the Bell, Melrose Place, Married… with Children. But back to that OR. Fast-forward about 30 years to this past June, and Richards, at age 54, had decided to get a facelift.
“I wanted to put things back up, where they were before,” says Richards, who’s had about eight months now to reflect on her decision. It’s not the first time she has had plastic surgery—Richards had her breasts done at 19, and has had revision surgery for her implants since then. But, she says, it is the first time she’s had cosmetic surgery on her face. “I was terrified,” says Richards, well aware that the world has watched her age. “Being in the public eye since my 20s, people know what I look like—a facelift is not something that I could hide.”
Now Richards is opening up about her plastic surgery the way the rest of us talk about what we did Tuesday morning. She is matter-of-fact and unapologetic, discussing incisions, drains, and swelling. She’s sitting at home in front of scattered framed photographs, subtly made up with her long hair swept over one shoulder, and her daughter’s cat occasionally popping up into our Zoom. Richards is now best known for her roles on reality TV—she’s been on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and had her own shows, including Denise Richards and Her Wild Things. Talking to her post-facelift, though, it’s hard not to think of her in the aughts, when she was in the news for her marriage, pregnancies, and divorce from actor Charlie Sheen—because she just looks so much like her younger self.
“It is night and day,” Richards says of her reflection before and after the facelift. “It’s shocking, actually.” After she had the facelift, she adds, other celebrities “were more comfortable telling me about theirs, but I’m not gonna name names.” Still, she says, it can be good to know that “it’s not just serums and working out and lasers” that make people like her look younger.