Photo: Nicolas Gerardin via Instagram.com/priyankachopra
Soon after making headlines with her Met Gala appearance, Priyanka Chopra has opened up about how a botched nose surgery affected her mental health and career. The Indian actor attended SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show this week to promote her upcoming Amazon Prime series Citadel, where she recalled the time she believed her acting career was “over before it started.”
The 40-year-old shared that after winning the Miss World title in 2000, she consulted a doctor for breathing issues and a ‘lingering head cold’. Upon finding a polyp (tissue growth), the doctor suggested surgery to have the polyp in her nasal cavity medically removed. According to Chopra, the doctor accidentally shaved the bridge of her nose, which caused it to collapse and alter her appearance. She says that the procedure resulted in her looking “completely different”, going into a “deep, deep depression”, and even causing her to be fired from three films. It was her father Ashok Chopra who later suggested that she go through corrective surgery. “I was terrified of that, but he was like, ‘I will be in the room with you.’ He held my hands through it and helped me build back my confidence,” she said.
Chopra has also talked about the procedure’s impact on her life in her 2021 memoir Unfinished. “Every time I looked in the mirror, a stranger looked back at me, and I didn’t think my sense of self or my self-esteem would ever recover from the blow,” she wrote. “I’m just like everyone else: I look at myself in the mirror and think maybe I can lose a little weight; I think maybe I can work out a little more. But I’m also content. This is my face. This is my body. I might be flawed, but I am me.”
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