What Happened to Jim Carrey's Face?

Dr. Chang (00:04):
You are listening to Secret Services, where we discuss the procedures nobody admits to, but everyone's curious about. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Chang. Welcome back to another episode of Secret Services. I'm Dr. Chang.

Jackie (00:18):
And I'm Jackie.

Dr. Chang (00:20):
Okay, Jackie. What's up now?

Jackie (00:22):
All right. We haven't talked about this yet. Jim Carrey's face. Have you seen what he looked like recently?

Dr. Chang (00:32):
So yeah. Yeah. It's been everywhere.

Jackie (00:35):
Everywhere.

Dr. Chang (00:35):
Hasn't everybody seen it? Jim Carrey's a weird guy. He's very edgy comedically. So I first saw, it was sort of like him walking down some sort of media aisle, kind of like a red carpet, but it wasn't really. And he had longer hair. His cheeks were kind of puffed up. And he was just talking to the interviewer on the press line. And I immediately thought it was an impersonator.

Jackie (01:09):
Yes. Or like a joke of sorts.

Dr. Chang (01:12):
Yes. He's the kind of guy who would ... He came to something. I think it was like the MTV Movie Awards or something at the Teen Choice or something where he was dressed up with this huge long beard where he looked like he was homeless or a hippie and he had big sunglasses so you couldn't even tell who he was. I mean, he has a history of doing wild stuff, especially for those kinds of shows.

Jackie (01:38):
Yeah. I definitely thought maybe he has a new movie coming out that we don't know about and that was like a teaser for it or something. But you know I love a good conspiracy or I love to hear about them. And so everyone's saying, was he cloned?

Dr. Chang (01:57):
I mean, if you had asked me that actually like a month ago, I would be like, okay, that's just a silly idea. But I found out that Tom Brady cloned his dog.

Jackie (02:08):
Okay. Yes. I saw that.

Dr. Chang (02:10):
So as a side note, the cloning thing is real.

Jackie (02:15):
They're clearly doing something.

Dr. Chang (02:16):
I was like, where can you go to get your dog cloned?

Jackie (02:19):
I know.

Dr. Chang (02:20):
And I immediately told my wife, "Get rid of these two dogs, get their old dog back."

Jackie (02:25):
It is kind of crazy. And yeah, I feel like just because you're cloning your dog, he's still going to have a different personality you would think.

Dr. Chang (02:33):
Right. I mean, well, their personality and their behavior is shaped somewhat by their genetics, but probably also by their life experiences. So unless he tries the dog exactly the same way, it's going to probably be different.

Jackie (02:46):
So it could have been cloned Jim Carrey.

Dr. Chang (02:50):
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, well, that's the thing. If you clone Jim Carrey in 2025 or 26, it's going to be baby Jim Carrey.

Jackie (03:01):
Right, right.

Dr. Chang (03:02):
It's like Mini Me.

Jackie (03:03):
Yeah. So what-

Dr. Chang (03:04):
Wouldn't be 60-year-old Jim Carrey.

Jackie (03:06):
My thing is just why would we clone Jim Carrey? Why? Or did he ask for it?

Dr. Chang (03:10):
Well, he's a gem. He's fantastic.

Jackie (03:12):
We just need more Jim Carrey movies. Is that the thing?

Dr. Chang (03:15):
Jim Carrey, I mean, he's had an incredible career. I remember when I was a kid and he was one of the only white guys on In Living Color. Did you ever see that show?

Jackie (03:24):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (03:24):
But he was extremely entertaining as a comedian and a comedic actor. And then of course that bounced into his movie career. I mean, he's had an incredible, incredible career.

Jackie (03:37):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (03:38):
But anyway, so this picture looks insane.

Jackie (03:42):
I mean, it is crazy to see ... Yeah, especially the side by side of then and now, he does look crazy. So do you think it's just-

Dr. Chang (03:51):
He's Canadian.

Jackie (03:52):
... plastic surgery?

Dr. Chang (03:54):
I mean, I'm not ... Just facts, just spitting facts.

Jackie (03:58):
I saw someone commented on one of the Instagram posts and they were like, "If you know Jim Carrey, you know that he would never get plastic surgery." And I was like, "Well, technically none of us know Jim Carrey." So you can't assume that he would never get anything done.

Dr. Chang (04:16):
So when I look at him, I think his face looks fuller.

Jackie (04:23):
Yeah. You mentioned his cheeks, and I did notice the cheeks first, I think. The cheeks are very prominent.

Dr. Chang (04:30):
His skin is smooth, but that could also be just from the volume. When you plump something up, then the skin gets tighter. So it could be that the plumping made the skin tighter, not that he did two separate things for the wrinkling or aging as well as the volume. I think that things that can make your face fuller could also be metabolic, not just surgery.

Jackie (04:57):
Oh, like he has a medical condition?

Dr. Chang (04:59):
It's possible.

Jackie (05:01):
That's true.

Dr. Chang (05:01):
I think people who have different hormone imbalances, steroid imbalances, or maybe use steroids for therapy for medication. It's possible you can get a little bit of more fullness and volume build up in your face or other parts of your body. It could be that he had something injected, could be something cosmetic, could be synthetic, or even his own fat or tissue. I don't know. There's a lot of possibilities, or he could have had something done. He just didn't strike me as somebody who looked particularly aged. For instance, if you look at guys like Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford, people who had a lot of sun damage and fine lines and wrinkling, you'd say, "Okay, well, they don't like that. " They wanted to go back to be having less wrinkles. And I don't think of Jim Carrey as that.

Jackie (06:01):
Also, I was trying to think about this too. When is even the last time we saw Jim Carrey? He hasn't done much recently.

Dr. Chang (06:07):
Yeah, I guess. I feel like he was a big proponent of naturopathic health or something like that. Some sort of some health stuff and things like that. But yeah, I don't know. He hasn't made any huge movies that I can think of, right?

Jackie (06:25):
Yeah. So maybe he's trying to break back in.

Dr. Chang (06:28):
Well, he's getting an award for something. I don't know what the award was for.

Jackie (06:31):
I don't really know either. Was it just his, I think maybe his career over time.

Dr. Chang (06:34):
Lifetime. Yeah.

Jackie (06:34):
Yeah. He hasn't done anything new, but maybe ... What if this is all for a role that we still don't know about? You don't know.

Dr. Chang (06:41):
Yeah. I mean, these actors do extreme stuff. Christian Bale has done extreme stuff, or Brendan Frazier.

Jackie (06:49):
Yeah. When he gained all that weight for the whale.

Dr. Chang (06:52):
Yeah.

Jackie (06:52):
I mean, that's crazy.

Dr. Chang (06:53):
He not only gained the weight, but he also wore this crazy fat suit, I think. Yeah. Like a super hot, heavy, synthetic silicone fat suit. So these actors will do incredible things for the role. I think The Rock recently dropped a ton of weight. He bulked up for this big wrestler movie that he was in, and then he dropped a ton of weight as well. So they're used to changing their bodies a little bit, but I think he's getting a lot of criticism, particularly about the eyes and the face. And we saw this with Bradley Cooper not too long ago as well.

Jackie (07:30):
Yeah. I was going to say, do we think maybe bleph, blepharoplasty?

Dr. Chang (07:34):
Well, it's a good topic to discuss. Actually, I saw a patient today, an older, not that old, maybe late 50s, early 60s gentleman who was asking about his eyes. And one of the questions he asked me was, "How often do you do this? " So I said, and he meant with men particularly. And I think in our practice, we're probably somewhere from 10 to 15% men patients. And the male patients tend to want to have something for their face, eyes, neck lift.

Jackie (08:13):
More so face than body.

Dr. Chang (08:15):
Right, right. We don't see as much. Sometimes there's a little bit of liposuction in there, but the number one area I think for men would be neck, face, eyes, and hair. So everything from the neck above. There certainly are popular things for cosmetic procedures for men.

Jackie (08:34):
Which I would say it looks like he had neck, face, eyes, and hair situation.

Dr. Chang (08:40):
He's got good hair. I mean, he's got good hair, but I don't know, he could have enhanced that too. But male plastic surgery is a growing field. It's really, really become demystified just like this women's plastic surgery, but I think men are a little bit less afraid. But I hate these kinds of results because they kind of scare people a little bit, but there's a little bit of difference. So I think that for men, for instance, the brow and the brow bone is very prominent in a man compared to a woman. It gives a little bit of male facial characteristics to have the upper part of the orbit and brow be prominent and strong appearing. You'll see some people refer to that as sort of hunter eye or a little bit stronger brow. And then why a guy like Clint Eastwood, for instance, never did any brow or eye work because that stern look of authority that he has was his signature. So you have to be careful when doing male brow lifts and helping to open the eye, but not raise it too much and do it with taste. I think that-

Jackie (09:51):
His eye brows do look a little raised.

Dr. Chang (09:53):
I mean, that could be an expression. I don't know. That looks like ... And he's making a crazy face. It's spocked up and he looks wild, but-

Jackie (09:59):
He is known for making his crazy faces.

Dr. Chang (10:02):
But then the other thing that's sort of trending for both men and women in eyelid surgery is to keep the volume. In the past, traditionally, you would remove some skin that's hanging over and you'd take out some fat to kind of redrape the tissue and not be so bulky. But now we try to keep the fat because the volume is really good at keeping the face look more youthful and plump. And so younger faces aren't hollow. Younger faces have a little bit of volume, have a little support under the skin, but the skin may not hang as much. And so we do that in women and men. We try to preserve the fat or maybe even add a little bit of fat where you've had some volume lost to kind of sort of fluff and support the skin on top. And I think that could be ... That definitely I think for Bradley Cooper, I think definitely it was a factor potentially. And then Jimmy got a lot of things done, I think, or got really changed.

Jackie (10:59):
Well, I feel like we see the older, generally, the older male population coming in to get an upper bleph. And so is that with aging, do you see the eyelid droop more?

Dr. Chang (11:14):
Right. Well, there's a couple things that can happen with aging in both men and women. First, the skin can start to hang and doesn't fold over as much. So when the skin starts to hang, it can block your vision actually. It can be physically harder to move as your eyelid opens. And so that can functionally impair your vision. You can also get weakening of the muscles and the muscle attachment. We call that ptosis when the eyelid itself hangs, not the skin on top, where the lashes don't totally go up as they used to above the circle or the iris of your eye or to the top. So you can get a weakening of the muscle or attenuation stretching of that muscle, and those can be related to aging and need to be tightened back up or lifted back up. So that's certainly true. And then in the lower eyes, you can get some laxity.

(12:07):
And so you get stretching or looseness of the ligaments and the tissues there that can cause some sagging. And that's a real problem, I think, for people. If you just hold your eyelid down, even for a few seconds, you can feel that cold rush of air. It's very uncomfortable. So I think that eyelid surgery is very powerful. It really does affect people positively if you do it well, but it does take a little bit of artistic consideration and anatomic understanding.

Jackie (12:40):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (12:40):
So I don't know. I think he could be playing us all. He's going to come, I don't know, he could easily come out with something totally different than the next awards show. He's a wildcard.

Jackie (12:52):
Right. I know. Also, does he just have a ton of Botox too? It just ...

Dr. Chang (12:59):
Maybe. I mean, I wouldn't be past it for him to go to an injector or somebody and say, "Do the most extreme thing you can because I want to look like a clown."

Jackie (13:11):
Yeah. Or I'm bringing back the mask.

Dr. Chang (13:13):
Maybe.

Jackie (13:14):
Right? I'm like, because one of his biggest movies was the mask. So I'm like, maybe he's trying to make his face look like a mask. I don't know.

Dr. Chang (13:21):
But I could see him intentionally trying to look weird, be like, make me look as weird as possible.

Jackie (13:28):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (13:30):
For a joke.

Jackie (13:31):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (13:31):
He's kind of ...

Jackie (13:33):
He's definitely out there.

Dr. Chang (13:35):
Yeah. Kind of unpredictable.

Jackie (13:37):
So I think patients can't look at something like this and be like, "Oh, well, I'm scared to get my eyes done because I don't want to look like Jim Carrey." You shouldn't have to worry too.

Dr. Chang (13:47):
I think he's messing with you.

Jackie (13:50):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (13:51):
But you'd done a lot of eye surgery.

Jackie (13:53):
Oh yeah.

Dr. Chang (13:55):
Back in the day, you did a lot of circulating in the operating room and doing eyelid surgery. What's that like? What's your favorite eye surgery procedure?

Jackie (14:04):
Oh gosh. I do like seeing the upper lower blephs. I think they do look good, but I did do a lot of also cataracts and all that, pterygium, all that stuff. But it is very important to have a technically good surgeon for things like that. I mean, such a small difference can be made. When you do a bleph, when you look at an upper bleph the amount of tissue that's removed, when you see it on the blue towel, it's so nothing, but it can make such a huge difference. And so it's like one millimeter off, you could have that surprise looking face. So I think it's cool seeing the immediate before and after on the table, but I think it's also just goes to show how important finding a good surgeon is.

Dr. Chang (14:55):
Yeah. I think that's true.You've seen how I do it or when I do it. I mean, I often say that the amount of time we're going to measure is majority of the surgery time.

Jackie (15:08):
Correct. Yeah. We're not doing a million cuts. It's not, but yeah, the measurement is so important.

Dr. Chang (15:14):
Right. Measure twice or thrice at once. Yeah. And it's everything. I mean, you have to use very precise marking and make sure the skin is stretched evenly and all sorts of things. It's a lot of variables. And the eyelid's a complicated area because it's moving.

Jackie (15:35):
Well, I was going to say, and sometimes you do the surgery where you need them to open and close their eyes. So that's always kind of a crazy thing because you think like, "Oh, the surgery, I'm asleep." But sometimes you need to see that movement.

Dr. Chang (15:48):
I think that's wild. I mean, for the cataracts, are they awake?

Jackie (15:53):
Yeah, they have some Valium on board, but yeah, they're awake.

Dr. Chang (15:58):
I mean, imagine operating on this eyeball that's already so small under a microscope with these very fine instruments and the eyeball can move because the patient could look around.

Jackie (16:07):
Yes. The moving eyeball is crazy.

Dr. Chang (16:11):
It's crazy to me. I mean, it's wild to think about having to hit this moving target when you're such a fine thing.

Jackie (16:21):
I would think about that all the time when I was scrubbing it. I can't imagine being that ... I can't imagine just laying there and someone's just digging around in my eyeball.

Dr. Chang (16:30):
Yeah. I think they do that with some of the LASIK stuff and all that sort of stuff too, right? And they're fully awake.

Jackie (16:35):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (16:37):
It's wild. I mean, I don't know how they do that.

Jackie (16:42):
I know.

Dr. Chang (16:43):
But we do lots of stuff in moving ... Then they do bypass and stuff like that. The heart is beating. The coronaries are all moving around and wiggling and you're using a microscope or loops to try to sew in a very small vessel the size of a coffee stir.

Jackie (16:58):
Yeah. That is true. It just is a little freaky.

Dr. Chang (17:03):
But yeah, as you said, I mean, the technical aspect, you have to have somebody who loves precision and has an eye for detail and is very, very focused on making sure that that's a very precise part of the procedure, placing the instruments, the sutures, the measuring, all that sort of stuff, that detail is essential.

Jackie (17:29):
So would you ever get a bleph?

Dr. Chang (17:34):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. As I gotten older, I feel like my eyes are getting a little bit saggy and I found out actually that my mom had had a bluff and I did my aunt's bluff. And so there is some genetic component to the shape of your eye, sort of the skin, fat, muscle relationship. So part of that is that. And also, that's one of the things that I think that I would do. I just got to decide when-

Jackie (18:14):
When to pull the trigger.

Dr. Chang (18:16):
To pull the trigger. Yeah.

Jackie (18:17):
I definitely think as I age, if I needed to, I totally would. I think people can look really good after getting an upper lower bleph.

Dr. Chang (18:29):
It's not that scary, I think. From what we see, it's not

Jackie (18:32):
That's true. We see it all the time. But I do

Dr. Chang (18:33):
When you look at that, you think, oh gosh, that's scary. So if you knew nothing, but in our world, it's pretty-

Jackie (18:41):
Yeah. If I have a friend ask me, should I, would you? I always say yeah.

Dr. Chang (18:46):
Yeah. If you're thinking about it, it's almost always a yes.

Jackie (18:51):
Yeah, I agree.

Dr. Chang (18:52):
It's very straightforward and yeah, you have to be precise to make sure it's perfect, but it's pretty straightforward.

Jackie (18:59):
Yeah. And then a lot of these scary photos, we're speculating anyways. We don't even know what they had done. So I feel like you can't look at that as a, "Well, I don't want to look like Jim Carrey or Bradley Cooper." I think we see an overwhelmingly great result from a bleph. So I would highly recommend.

Dr. Chang (19:21):
Yeah, yeah. I think if you're thinking about it, it's a high yield procedure, I think. And most people age a lot in the eyes.

Jackie (19:30):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (19:30):
I mean, that is just a common place to age.

Jackie (19:33):
Yeah. And I think that exactly. Afterwards, it's not necessarily like, "Oh my gosh, you got worked on. " It's like, "Oh, you look so well rested."

Dr. Chang (19:42):
I do caution patients that because the eyelid skin is very thin, because there's a lot of circulation, you're going to bruise. Some people bruise less, some people bruise more, you ice your eyes, you do other things to take Arnica to reduce your bruising. But if you can get through a little bit of bruising, the pain is not usually the cardinal feature of recovery. And once you get through a little bit of bruising and swelling, I think it's very worthwhile.

Jackie (20:13):
Yeah. That's a good point though. You do bruise. You do bruise a little bit. Yeah.

Dr. Chang (20:20):
I mean, and I think there's some people who bruise a little bit more easily. I think men tend to have a little bit higher chance of bruising because they have generally a little higher blood pressure, larger blood vessels, a little more circulation. However, they also heal a little faster, I think. So it might be a little worse for the men, but they recover a little quicker. Well, we'll have to schedule you or me soon.

Jackie (20:49):
There you go.

Dr. Chang (20:49):
We'll have to-

Jackie (20:50):
Let's do it.

Dr. Chang (20:50):
... trade notes.

Jackie (20:51):
Yeah. We can do a bleph day in the office.

Dr. Chang (20:53):
Yeah. We'll go one eye at a time.

Jackie (20:55):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (20:56):
And then so once we get that scheduled, we'll come back with updates. But anyway, we got to go. People are waiting. We'll be back next time.

Jackie (21:07):
Great. See ya, thanks.

Dr. Chang (21:10):
Thanks for listening to Secret Services, the podcast where we see everything and say nothing except right here. I'm Dr. Christopher Chang, double board certified plastic surgeon located in Tysons, Virginia. Follow us on TikTok @CongressionalPsurgery or on Instagram @congressionalplasticsurgery. To send us a classified message or to hear more episodes, go to secretservicespodcast.com. Links to everything we talked about on today's show are available in the show notes. Oops, patient's here. We got to go.