One thing fans have always loved about Rosie O’Donnell is that she tells it like it is. She never holds back from speaking her truth. The actress is back in the U.S. after briefly moving to Ireland. She’s starring in the Off-Broadway production of her one-woman show, Common Knowledge, through the summer. She opened up about the shocking way drugs saved her life.
Rosie O’Donnell Opens Up About Life-Saving Drugs
Rosie O’Donnell earned the nickname the “Queen of Nice” during her daytime talk show run. But her brief stint as a co-host on The View sparked a decades-long feud with President Trump. In fact, her disagreement with his administration’s policies caused her to flee to Ireland in 2025. However, she made a surprise turn to the United States in June to attend the Tony Awards.
All eyes were on the actress on the red carpet as she debuted her facelift for the first time. She underwent the procedure after losing a significant amount of weight. In a new interview with PEOPLE magazine, Rosie O’Donnell credits weight loss drugs with saving her life.
She candidly admitted that her struggle with her weight began as a child after her mother died. “My father would give us a one hundred dollar bill and we would go to Foodtown to do the food shopping. Now if you’re 11-years-old and you’re shopping for a family of five, there’s nothing nutritious about it. It was Entenmann’s and Cap’n Crunch,” she said. Rosie O’Donnell said everyone in her family “got heavy” from the grief and trauma of her mother’s death.
She began taking Mounjaro three years ago after being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. “Mounjaro saved my life. I’ve lost a pound or two a month for three years,” she said about the drug. Rosie O’Donnell has lost about 60 pounds total. She said that she would love to do commercials for Mounjaro if they dropped the price for consumers instead of paying her.
She Reveals Cost Of Facelift, Celebrity ‘Coach’
Rosie O’Donnell’s weight loss came with one negative side effect: extra skin on her face that drooped. She recalled how people in Ireland kept asking her if she was okay because her face was always in a frown.
The questions about her happiness eventually led her to undergo a facelift against her youngest child’s wishes. Rosie O’Donnell revealed to PEOPLE magazine exactly how much the facelift cost after previously joking that it cost more than any car she’d ever owned.
The facelift came with a price tag of $90,000. It’s money well spent, if you ask her. She revealed that a celebrity friend was her “coach” through the procedure. “Ricki Lake has been very public about hers and she was my coach,” Rosie O’Donnell shared.
The actress admitted that she wasn’t going to publicly discuss her facelift until people started noticing the difference and she felt she had to address it rather than pretend nothing had changed.
Rosie O’Donnell’s solo show Common Knowledge is running Off-Broadway from July 22 to August 8, 2026
Jennifer Havener grew up in a small town in Upstate New York. She earned her B.A in Writing & Literature from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She always knew watching reality TV shows and soap operas, particularly ‘Days of Our Lives’, would come in handy someday. When she’s not writing, she’s playing with her dogs, Lola and Ruger