Millions of people will sit in front of their television for the spectacle that is the Oscars. Among them: Hollywood’s starmakers. The hairdressers who spent hours crafting updos, the designers who sketched and resketched gowns, the stylists who stacked the diamonds just so. With bated breath, they watch and wait, knowing that a red-carpet shout-out could be a career-making—and majorly revenue-boosting—moment. But there is one member of the so-called “glam squad” who knows his name will be spoken exactly nowhere near the red carpet.
“It’s fun to watch the Academy Awards and see your work up there,” says Andrew Frankel, an associate clinical professor of otolaryngology at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles and a facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. But is it going to get Frankel any new clients? Hell no.
Welcome to the world of the celebrity plastic surgeon. Treating Oscar winners, royalty, billionaires, heads of state. Meeting, greeting, injecting—and, of course, operating on—VVVIPs the world over. The things you must see. The egos you must nurture. The tantrums you must tolerate. And, yes, the bald-faced lies you must witness.