Over the years, Valerie Bertinelli has come to embrace the skin she's in. However, this journey was not without its challenges. Her past attempts to alter her body, including getting breast implants in the 1980s and subsequently having them removed in 2024, led to some scary complications.
"I liked it for a little while and then started to hate it," she told People in a March 4 interview. "At a certain point, I had gained and lost so much weight that my boobs were just... I felt like they were down to my belly button. I was like, 'I just want my small boobs back.'"
When she went to get the implants removed, she was horrified to see them had become "hard and crusted over," likening them to ostrich eggs. "The look on my doctor's face when he finally saw me made me think, 'Oh s--t, I guess I should have come in earlier,'" Valerie recalled to People. "And he took everything out [the implant and the surrounding tissues] and then my breast became infected and started to cave in on itself. It became a crater."
The implants and the removal had left her with an infection in her right breast, which took six months to recover and grow back the missing tissue, as detailed further in her memoir, Getting Naked. "They are now two completely different sizes; the implant on the left is over the muscle, and my right side is sad and misshapen," the 65-year-old wrote. "Eventually, I will have a fourth operation that will, I am assured, even things out once and for all."
After joking to People that her cats and dogs are "the only ones looking at" her breasts and that any future partner would need to be someone who can't see to avoid looking at them, she affirmed that having a lighter mindset has helped her through the harder times.
"It was so serious," Valerie—who is mom to Wolfgang Van Halen, 34, with ex-husband Eddie Van Halen—explained. "I just had to find the humor in it."
These days, though Valerie does not fault anyone for altering their appearance however they like—she too has received filler and Botox over the years—she has also come to appreciate the joys of aging.
"Would I like my body to be more taut and not have this?" she joked with People, referring to her upper arms. "Of course. But I am in my sixties. You know what? My body goes up and down stairs. Downstairs hurts a little bit more. But I can carry my 35-pound dog when she has an amputation. And I can stand watching my son for two hours on stage—and it’s heaven."
