In Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s memoir Unfinished, on stands today, she tells the story of her life in the spotlight—and she couldn’t have gotten more real. Within the pages, the Indian actress and entrepreneur reflects on childhood in her home country, becoming Miss World in 2000 and moving to America, but she also touches on how the film industry changed her, starting with her “horrifying” nose surgery gone wrong.
As Entertainment Tonight reports, Chopra Jonas visited a doctor a year after her Miss World win to remove a polyp from her nose. Post-procedure, the 38-year-old discovered that her surgeon had accidentally shaved the bridge of her nose, leaving her with what she describes as an “unrecognizable” face.
“I felt devastated and hopeless,” she writes in her memoir. “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.” Her self image only went downhill when her surgery caused her acting career to slip out from underneath her feet: “Following the surgery, Priyanka was dropped from two of the first films she was signed on to make. Shortly thereafter, she was told by one producer that she needed to undergo loads of plastic surgery in order to have a successful film career,” writes Entertainment Tonight.
“All the talk of body parts and skin tone collectively made me feel devalued, unseen and uncertain about my future,” says Chopra Jonas. “Having experienced the aftermath of a supposedly simple polyp removal, I knew I wasn’t willing to follow the course he’d [the producer] laid out for me, even if he, as the highly successful expert, was right.”
After “several corrective surgeries” on her nose, the star says she has “gotten accustomed to this face,” adding that she is no longer surprised by her appearance when she looks in the mirror. “I’ve made peace with this slightly different me…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.”
