Rosie O'Donnell shows off facelift at Tony Awards as she returns to the US and trashes Trump on the red carpet

The results of Rosie O'Donnell's expensive facelift that 'no one' noticed were finally visible at the 2026 Tony Awards. 

The comedienne, 64, recently revealed she had got a facelift that cost more than any car she had purchased. To her disappointment, apparently no one even noticed her freshened up complexion. 

But under the spotlight of the red carpet, the few tweaks were at last noticeable. 

O'Donnell momentarily removed her glasses to showcase a tighter, firmer, and revitalized countenance as she posed on the red carpet in an arty black suit. 

It marks a rare return to the U.S. for O'Donnell, who relocated to Ireland following Trump's re-election last year.

The former talk show host didn't mince her words when asked by The Hollywood Reporter about her thoughts on the current state of politics at the Tonys.  

'I think it's horrific and every time that he falls asleep and everyone pretends not to notice or he lets go gas and everyone shrieks in disgust and backs up and everyone's pretending that's not happening? Or that these cognitive tests are somehow a sign of his intelligence?' she told the publication. 

'He told the world last week that surprisingly, the word 'dumb' has a B at the end and most people don't know that. I'm like, "Yeah, most people under six!"'

O'Donnell's move abroad came amid a long-standing feud with Trump, dating back to her days as a co-host on The View. In July, the former president publicly threatened to strip O’Donnell of her citizenship.

Speaking on SiriusXM’s Cuomo Mornings on Friday, O’Donnell revealed that she had quietly returned to the U.S. for a short visit.

'I recently went home for two weeks and I did not really tell anyone. I just went to see my family,' she said.

'I wanted to see how hard it would be for me to get in and out of the country. I wanted to feel what it felt like.'

She told Cuomo, ‘I wanted to hold my children again.’

The mother of five left the US in January 2025 with her youngest, Clay, while her four older children - Parker, 31, Blake, 26, Chelsea, 28, and Vivienne, 23 - remained in America.

‘And I hadn’t been home in over a year,’ O’Donnell said. ‘I also wanted to make sure that it was safe for me before I brought my daughter this summer, where we plan to spend the summertime off from her schooling here with my family.’

The star added that one of her adult sons is expecting his first child, leaving her ‘very excited to be home.’

Since the relocation, O'Donnell has been partly focused on improving her self-image and appearance. 

The actress recently revealed she'd undergone the surgery in January after agonizing over it for months, only to discover that nobody had remarked any change.

She also shared two selfies showing her face before and after going under the knife, allowing her fans to judge for themselves what impact it'd had.

Once counting herself a strident moral objector of plastic surgery, O'Donnell explained that she had changed her mind on the issue when she shed 50lb and discovered that her skin had begun to sag as a result.

'I used to feel very strongly about facelifts,' she wrote, admitting she'd 'assigned myself as head of all women who would never' get one, as she regarded them as a 'betrayal of feminism and of aging.'

But after her weight loss, thanks to drug Mounjaro, the former The View anchor found her position changing, saying: 'It wasn’t wrinkles - it was gravity. I’d look in the mirror and think - this isn’t aging, this is melting with intention.'

O'Donnell confessed: 'I tried to be evolved about it and say things like: “This is natural. This is earned.” And then… “umm how earned does it have to look?” There’s a point where acceptance starts to feel like lying.'

After getting to the point 'where acceptance starts to feel like lying', she began to research surgery options, but quickly hit a new hurdle in the form of her 13-year-old daughter Clay.

The teenager strenuously opposed the idea of her mother going under the knife, arguing she was a role model to young women and fiercely stating: 'I wouldn’t be able to respect you if you did it.'

Reminding her of her own 'younger, more certain, more morally rigid self', Clay's strong feelings successfully convinced O'Donnell to put the procedure on pause.

But she explained that after months of going back-and-forth over what to do, she ultimately persuaded herself she did not want to teach her children that 'my body belongs to an idea either. Even a good idea. Even feminism.'

Overcoming her misgivings and steeling herself, she paid a price higher than that of any car she ever purchased and went in for the operation.

And employing her famous wit and self-deprecating comedy, she poked fun at the fact that after all her turmoil, she emerged from the operation only to find that no one could see any difference in her appearance.

'And guess what - no one has noticed,' she quipped. 'Not one person. Not a friend, not a stranger, not even people who owe me compliments. My teenager has not said a word. Nothing.

'I went through a full existential feminist crisis, had my face and neck surgically altered, and the result is… zippo'.

Yet Rosie rationalized the result as 'the best possible outcome' and insisted that the last thing she had told her doctor before the procedure was that she'd never say: 'I wish you did more', because she 'wanted to still be me, just… less haunted.'

'I didn’t disappear, I didn’t become someone else - I just stopped arguing with the mirror,' she wrote. 'And maybe that’s enough. Or at the very least…it’s what a lower deep plane face lift looks like when it minds its own business.'