Priyanka Chopra Jonas worried her acting days were over after suffering a bungled nose surgery early in her career.
The “Citadel” actor told Howard Stern about dealing with a “deep depression” after an operation to remove a polyp in her nasal cavity totally changed her face.
“This thing happens, and my face looks completely different, and I went into a deep, deep depression,” Chopra Jonas explained on the shock jock’s SiriusXM show.
Having just begun her time in Bollywood, the former Miss Universe wondered if her acting career “was over before it started.”
While she described her first time under the knife as disastrous, Chopra Jonas returned to doctors after her father encouraged her to get reconstructive surgery.
“I was terrified of that, but he was like, ‘I will be in the room with you,’” the “Quantico” star remembered, thanking her father for how he “held my hands through it and helped me build back my confidence.”
Chopra Jonas also credited director Anil Sharma for giving her her big break in 2003’s “The Hero: Love Story of a Spy,” telling Stern, “That filmmaker was very kind ... He, while the tide was against me, said, ‘It will be a small part but give it your all.’ And I did.”
She shared more details about the operation in her 2021 memoir “Unfinished.”
“While shaving off the polyp, the doctor also accidentally shaved the bridge of my nose and the bridge collapsed,” she wrote. “When it was time to remove the bandages and the condition of my nose was revealed, Mom and I were horrified. My original nose was gone. My face looked completely different. I wasn’t me anymore.”