Valerie Bertinelli is getting candid in a new memoir about her relationship with her body, including the complications that left her breasts ‘deformed’—and the joke she later made about needing to date someone who ‘can’t see’.
Speaking with Drew Barrymore, the Silent Witness actress discussed her book, Getting Naked, and detailed the surgeries she’s undergone and how things took an unexpected turn, per the Post.
In the memoir, the 65-year-old explains that her journey started decades ago with insecurity about her naturally small chest—feelings that eventually pushed her to get breast augmentation in the 1980s.
But rather than feeling confident afterward, Bertinelli writes that she felt self-conscious and uncomfortable with the outcome, saying she was even “embarrassed” by what she’d done.
Over time, additional procedures followed, and the situation worsened. Bertinelli says later surgeries ultimately resulted in visible deformation—something she recalled Barrymore once reacting to bluntly during a private moment.
She said: “I mean, if you read the book, you’ll know that my boobs are deformed, and I talk very extensively and graphically about how deformed they are. I had four surgeries in 2024. But Drew is like, ‘How bad can it be?’ I’m like, ‘Really?’”
Bertinelli described playfully opening her blouse for emphasis, and said Barrymore’s response after seeing the results was immediate: “Oh yeah, that’s bad.”
“I love her honesty,” Bertinelli said at 92NY in New York City on March 10.“It’s like, I can trust this woman.”
“My boobs suck, but I’m not dating, so it doesn’t matter,” Bertinelli went on to say, while Barrymore added: “Yet.”
In her book, Bertinelli reflects on how the first implants didn’t make her feel better at all, writing: “After I got the implants, I never put them on display. I tried to hide them even, embarrassed that I had done it,” she wrote in her book.
Later, after suffering a serious fall, she decided to have the older implants taken out—only to get smaller replacements put in about six weeks afterward.
Not long after that procedure, she says she noticed worrying symptoms: discoloration, swelling, and then feeling faint.
By that evening, she writes, she was “running a fever” that climbed as high as 104 degrees. She later learned the area had become infected as a result of the procedure.
“The look on my doctor’s face when he finally saw me made me think ‘Oh s***‘ I guess I should have come in earlier’, said Bertinelli in an interview with People. “And he took everything out and then my breast became infected and started to cave in on itself. It became a crater.”
She said she still has another procedure ahead to make things more even, then added a darkly humorous aside about who’s actually seeing the results: “I have to have one more surgery to even them out,” she said, revealing: “Me and these guys [pointing to her animals] are the only ones looking at my boobs anyways, but I don’t care because I can’t see without my glasses on … I’ll have to date somebody who can’t see.”
“Anyway, those were my boobs,” she added. “Anybody want to date me? It was so serious I just had to find the humor in it.”
Beyond the physical recovery, Bertinelli also shared that she’s been trying to change how she talks to—and about—her body, including making a point to apologize for the years of criticism.
She said: “I’ve had this, you know, this love-hate thing with my body for too many decades. Enough already, felt like I was really getting to the final, like, ‘oh, I’m, like, healed.’ And then 2024 came and it was like the worst year of my life.”
She said: “I had four surgeries within six months, my hair started to fall out. I was having emotional trouble with you know, people in my life.”
After struggling with weight-related distress and everything that came with a difficult year, she said she’s working on treating herself with more compassion—learning to value her body as it is now, not only as it was when she was younger.