Priyanka Chopra is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful women on the planet, but that didn't stop one entertainment industry bigwig from suggesting that she wasn't pretty enough.
In her new memoir "Unfinished," the actress dishes on her rise to stardom and her early struggles with her appearance.
Priyanka writes that she felt "devastated and hopeless" after botched nose surgery as a teenager. At the time, a doctor accidentally shaved the bridge of her nose while trying to remove a polyp from her nasal cavity.
"Every time I looked in the mirror, a stranger looked back at me, and I didn't think my sense of self or my self-esteem would ever recover from the blow," she writes, adding that the press began calling her "Plastic Chopra."
The negative press coverage had an effect on her career: She was dropped from a few films. Then, she was told by an unnamed "director/producer" that plastic surgery was the answer.
"After a few minutes of small talk, the director/producer told me to stand up and twirl for him. I did," she recalls. "He stared at me long and hard, assessing me, and then suggested that I get a boob job, fix my jaw, and add a little more cushioning to my butt. If I wanted to be an actress, he said, I'd need to have my proportions 'fixed,' and he knew a great doctor in LA he could send me to. My then-manager voiced his agreement with the assessment."
Not long after, Priyanka parted ways with that manager.
She didn't heed the advice she had just received, which made her feel "stunned and small."
Priyanka did have "several corrective surgeries" to fix her botched nose but stayed natural otherwise.
"If I looked like other 'classically beautiful' girls, then I wouldn't stand out, and more important, I wouldn't be me," she writes. "Now when I look in the mirror, I am no longer surprised; I've made peace with this slightly different me. … I'm just like everyone else: I look at myself in the mirror and think maybe I can lose a little weight; I think maybe I can work out a little more. But I'm also content. This is my face. This is my body. I might be flawed, but I am me."