Actress Denise Richards made an appearance at the Daytime Beauty Awards in Los Angeles on Wednesday after undergoing a $200,000 facelift.
The 55-year-old star showed off a smooth, wrinkle-free complexion on the red carpet while wearing a sheer frock adorned with floral embroidery.
Richards initially posed alone for photographers before being joined by her plastic surgeon, Dr Ben Talei, who arrived wearing a powder blue suit.
Dr Talei, a plastic surgeon operating out of Beverly Hills, performed the deep-plane facelift for the star as part of a comprehensive surgical makeover.
A deep-plane facelift is a surgical procedure that repositions the underlying muscular layer and facial tissues alongside the skin to release tight anatomical ligaments. Beverly Hills is a city in Los Angeles County, California, renowned worldwide as a center for luxury living, entertainment industry figures, and high-end cosmetic medicine clinics.
Facial Surgical Procedures and Details
In addition to the deep-plane facelift, Richards underwent several complementary surgical procedures to reshape her facial features.
Her surgical alterations included a brow lift, an upper eye lift, a lip lift, and fat grafting where fat harvested from her own thighs was transferred into her face and neck.
A brow lift raises sagging tissue on the forehead to smooth horizontal creases, while an upper eye lift, or blepharoplasty, removes excess skin from the upper eyelids. Fat grafting involves taking living fat cells through liposuction from donor areas such as the thighs and reinjecting them into areas experiencing age-related volume loss.
Richards shared that Dr Talei did not perform any procedures on her lower eyelids, concentrating instead on her upper face, neck, and lower facial structure.
Later in the event, Dr Talei accompanied Richards onto the stage, where the pair addressed the gathered audience from behind the podium.
Decision to Undergo Full Facial Surgery
Richards previously opened up about her choice to undergo extensive cosmetic surgery during an appearance on Bunnie Xo's Dumb Blonde podcast.
The actress explained that she had not initially planned to undergo a full facial procedure when seeking surgical consultation.
"Originally I had been thinking about doing just my neck," Richards shared on the podcast.
Richards revealed that advice from a prominent friend convinced her to expand the scope of the operation.
"And then a friend of mine, she's very well-known, and she's not public about hers, and she said to me, 'You have to do the whole thing,'" Richards stated.
Prior to the surgical procedures, the former reality television star had limited her cosmetic treatments exclusively to non-surgical options.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star had only ever done Botox and fillers before deciding on a total facial overhaul.
Richards used a home renovation comparison to explain why she ultimately decided to treat her entire face at once.
"The only analogy I could give is like you remodel a house and do one room and the room looks great, but it doesn’t match the rest of the house," she explained.
Praising her surgeon, Richards called Dr Talei's work "impeccable" and detailed the precise scope of the operation.
"He did the neck, the lower face, the upper, the brow lift. The only thing he didn’t do were my lower lids. He did my upper lids," she added.
Richards concluded her assessment of the surgical outcome by stating, "It was the best thing I did for myself."
Richards rose to international fame in the late 1990s through major film roles, playing Carmen Ibanez in the 1997 science-fiction film Starship Troopers, Kelly Van Ryan in the 1998 erotic thriller Wild Things, and nuclear physicist Christmas Jones in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. She later joined the reality television franchise The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as a main cast member for its ninth and tenth seasons.
Sami Sheen Rhinoplasty and Cosmetic Procedures
Richards is not the only member of her household to undergo cosmetic procedures, as her daughter Sami Sheen had a nose job in 2024.
Sheen's surgical procedure was documented on the Bravo reality series Denise Richards & Her Wild Things.
For the operation, Sheen sought out celebrity surgeon Dr Deepak Dugar in Beverly Hills for one of his signature scarless nose jobs.
The scarless procedure is a closed rhinoplasty where all surgical incisions are made entirely inside the nose, ensuring no external cuts remain visible.
In nasal surgery, a closed rhinoplasty accesses internal cartilage and bone structure exclusively through intra-nasal incisions. By contrast, an open rhinoplasty requires a small incision across the columella, which is the narrow strip of skin and tissue that separates the nostrils, sometimes leaving a small external scar on the base of the nose.
A closed scarless nose job typically costs between $19,000 and $24,000, with initial surgical healing taking as little as one week.
Dr Dugar explained that closed rhinoplasty is the preferred surgical method for high-profile clients seeking discreet aesthetic changes.
"I'm part of an 80-year legacy practice here in Beverly Hills doing celebrity nose jobs and I can tell you that most celebrity rhinoplasty is closed scarless rhinoplasty because of the discretion," Dr Dugar told the Daily Mail in 2024.
"They don't want people to know they had a nose job. There's still a taboo and a stigma no matter who you are. They want very natural results that look like it could have been what they were born with," Dr Dugar continued.
The surgeon contrasted natural surgical outcomes with trend-driven nose designs popularized on social media platforms.
"The cookie cutter, TikTok, Instagram, Turkish upturned nose job, the 'Barbie nose' as they call it, everyone knows you can't really be born with that," Dr Dugar said.
Sheen, who works as a creator on the subscription platform OnlyFans, has also undergone a breast augmentation, porcelain veneers, Botox, and facial fillers.
OnlyFans is an internet content subscription service launched in 2016 based in London, where creators earn revenue directly from users who subscribe to access their media.
Career Projects and Online Platforms
Richards has also established a presence on OnlyFans, where she ranks as one of the platform's highest-earning creators, generating income exceeding six figures per month.
Alongside her digital subscription content, Richards continues her television career, starring as Shauna Fulton on the long-running CBS daytime soap opera series The Bold and the Beautiful.
The Bold and the Beautiful is an American daytime television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS, which has been broadcasting continuously since its debut in 1987.
