Julie Chen underwent plastic surgery to make her eyes 'look bigger'

While many high-profile stars try to hide their plastic surgery, Julie Chen took an alternate approach. The Big Brother host and former member of the Talk has been regularly outspoken about her experiences under-the-knife, a decision that Chen admits helped jumpstart her career at a young age.

"My secret dates back to — my heart is racing — it dates back to when I was 25 years old and I was working as a local news reporter in Dayton, Ohio," Chen started in a segment for The Talk back in 2013. "You will never be on this anchor desk, because you're Chinese," she was told.

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"Because of your heritage, because of your Asian eyes, sometimes I've noticed when you're on camera and you're interviewing someone, you look disinterested, you look bored," her boss continued to tell her. A prospective agent echoed these sentiments.

"All I could see was my eyes [after that]," Chen recalled a few years later. So, she decided to undergo a blepharoplasty, or double eyelid surgery, to make her eyes appear bigger. It was a choice that risked her becoming disowned by some of her family.

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"I was raised to believe in myself based on what I could do with my brain, not my looks. That's why initially I was surprised to hear the agent recommend the surgery. I felt naive. After much thought and discussing it with my parents, I made the decision to do it," she explained.

"No one's more proud of being Chinese than I am," she confirmed. "And I have to live with the decisions I've made. Every decision I've made…it got [me] to where we are today, and I'm not going to look back."

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