‘I want my old face back’

Laura Pillarella, 40, has spent 10 years and £42,000 trying to buy the perfect face – now she wishes she’d never started

Laura's face is now scarred by surgery

I had my suicide all worked out. I was going to rent a room in a hotel on the outskirts of my hometown, get a stack of sleeping tablets, and wash them down with a bottle of red wine.

I wasn't going to leave a note. People would know why I'd killed myself. One look at my face said it all - I was hideously ugly.

And the worst part? I'd made myself look that way. I'd spent 10 years and £42,000 trying to be beautiful. But my face was lopsided, my nose was too skinny, my lips were distorted and my chin was crooked. My face was a mess.

Looking back at photos of myself in my early 20s before I'd ever had a scalpel near me, I wasn't beautiful but I was pretty enough. Now I looked like a freak.

I decided life wasn't worth living after visiting yet another surgeon to try to fix my face. He studied me and said: 'You've had too much plastic surgery. It doesn't make you look attractive.' I was 35.

To hear from a supposed expert that, after everything I'd put myself through, all I'd done was make myself ugly and unnatural, tipped me over the edge. I decided to put an end to the emotional torment that had plagued me since I was at junior school.

My childhood wasn't a happy one and there were a lot of fights and arguments. My parents split up when I was six. I never felt close to my dad. He would leave copies of Playboy lying around his house. At just 10 years old, I saw the pictures of the models and believed they were beautiful with their perfect faces and big boobs. I wanted to look like that. Looks were the only important thing, intelligence or personality didn't count.

After my parents split up, Mum was angry and upset. She'd often say that giving birth to me and my brothers had ruined her looks and her body.

Age 24 before her surgery

I developed early - by the age of 14, I had 36D breasts and was attracting a lot of attention from boys, who wanted me to fool around with them at parties. I was flattered, I suppose, but quickly understood these boys saw me as a sex object, rather than a girl deserving love. I lost my virginity at 17 and felt worthless.

Sure, my body got me attention, but I wasn't pretty. I had bad acne and always felt ugly. I was working as a cocktail waitress while studying at college, then a friend got me a job at a strip club. I made good money and my dad seemed pleased. 'I'm glad you're pretty enough to do it,' he said.

I'd had a succession of boyfriends from the age of 18, but I never believed them if they said they loved me. Then, at 24, I met John, then 23. He was polite, he spoke to my face, not my chest, he was kind and respected me.

He didn't focus on appearances, but without reassurance I felt ugly. I tried to combat my feelings of inadequacy by drinking and smoking too much, too often.

And I had to have a tan. I fried myself in the sun at every opportunity. My hard living took its toll on my skin - at 25, I looked 10 years older. My skin was wrinkled and I had huge bags under my eyes. I was a long way from pretty.

I decided to buy myself beautiful

It seemed to me that beautiful people had an easy life. At college, it was the gorgeous girls everyone worshipped. That's what I wanted - to be adored, envied and desired.

I pored over photos of stars who'd had work done - to me, they looked amazing. It was then I decided that although I hadn't been born beautiful, I could buy myself beautiful.

The thought of surgery didn't faze me - so many of the strippers at work had fake breasts that it seemed commonplace. At the age of 25, I had a consultation with a surgeon and asked him what he thought I should have done.

I was surprised when the first thing he said was that my chin needed an implant, and that he could remove my eye bags. But I agreed in a heartbeat.

Back home, I told John. He didn't try to stop me - we were in the first flush of romance and he said he just wanted me to be happy. The operation cost £2,375 and he offered to pay half.

At her brother's wedding before her final op

The op took four hours and I was so looking forward to seeing my beautiful new face.

But when I came round from the anaesthetic I barely recognised myself. What on earth had I done? My face was swollen, bloodied and ugly. I spent two weeks holed up in my flat - even John was barred from visiting. I was scared he would be repulsed and dump me.

When the bandages came off I was disappointed. I wasn't happy with my new chin. I wasn't beautiful - just different.

John, a gardener, was always a man of few words, and didn't seem too fazed by the change in my appearance. His attitude was that if it made me happy, that was fine with him.

By this time, we'd moved in together and we got married the following year. Our sex life was good and he was supportive and reliable. But I told him I'd never want children. I'd been scarred by my mother's cruel words about how my brothers and I had ruined her body. Thankfully, John didn't want children either.

Changing faces - 10 years of surgery

1) Age 26: Chin operation 2) Age 27:Lips plumped and lifted 3) Age 29: Nose job 4) Age 33: Eyelid lift and laser treatment 5) Age 35: Cheek lift

He kept any thoughts about my craving to change the way I looked to himself. I would constantly ask if he thought was attractive and all he'd reply was: 'Yes, of course.'

So I sought validation in surgery. When I was 27, I booked my second op with another surgeon, this time to improve my lips. I wanted them to be plump and pouty, like Angelina Jolie's. I knew John loved me, but I wanted him to find me even sexier than he already claimed to.

The surgeon suggested a new treatment of Gore-Tex implants: plastic strips inserted under the top line of the lips to make them bigger. I had the £1,400 op - but hated the results. My lips looked stretched, not plumped.

So my surgeon suggested an upper lip lift. She cut a diamond-shaped section of skin from under the base of my nostrils and sewed the 'seams' together, lifting the upper lip higher.

I felt it looked strange and lost faith in her, so for my next op I found a third surgeon, this time to give me younger-looking skin. She seemed capable so I let her give me a chemical peel, which used acid to remove the top layer of skin. My face looked much smoother and younger afterwards.

Finally, I felt I had found someone I could trust, and over the next five years had five further procedures with her: a nose job, an upper eyelid lift, further lip implants, another skin-smoothing treatment - this time using a laser to stimulate the collagen underneath - and a cheek lift, all costing over £9,000.

Again, John's view was that if the surgery made me happy, he was fine with it.

Some of the treatments were painful - the laser on my face felt as if I was being pinged with rubber bands. And the cheek lift left my face tight and taut, giving me that 'wind tunnel' effect. It also looked lopsided, so the surgeon tried to correct it on two occasions, but I thought it still looked weird.

By this point, I was feeling really down about my appearance. I asked friends if they thought I looked odd and they agreed that all the work on my face had made me look strange. This is when, desperate for help, I went to see yet another surgeon, and he was the one who told me I didn't look attractive.

I sank into a deep depression. I now had my own business as a personal trainer, but I was barely able to leave the house. My income suffered as a result.

It seemed the only way out was suicide

One day I was lying on the sofa, sobbing, when John hugged me. 'You're not ugly,' he reassured me. 'I've never understood why you think you are.'

He didn't care what I looked like, only how I felt inside. It was sweet of him to say it, but I didn't believe him. That was when I decided the only way out was to kill myself.

But two weeks later, my younger brother, Scott, now 37, asked me to give a speech at his wedding. I was so touched that he wanted me to be a big part of his special day that there was no way I could go ahead with my suicide plan- I had Scott to consider.

I felt incredibly nervous and self-conscious, standing up in front of so many people, but seeing Scott and his new bride glowing with joy, and having him smile at me so lovingly, changed something inside me.

After I gave my speech paying tribute to my brother, I started crying. It was like a release - I'd broken through a barrier by speaking from the heart in front of lots of people, and it gave me a glimmer of hope that maybe I could finally take control of my life. Death wasn't an option.

In 2005, aged 35, I booked another consultation with a different cosmetic surgeon. He scrutinised my face and said: "I can't get you back to how you looked before, but I can get you close." That was all I needed to hear. I smiled for the first time in months. Finally, I felt positive.

Laura says she will never have more surgery

The operation was major - a full facelift, brow lift and tightening of the tendons under my eyes. It took 10 hours.

The healing process took a year. At first, I didn't recognise myself, just like after my very first operation. I was terrified, as I had no idea how I was eventually going to look. The face that appeared under all the swelling, however, was a definite improvement. I could see a little bit of the real me again.

It took one last procedure, my 15th, in 2006, to smooth my chin and finally I saw my new face. And for the first time in years, I saw a face I liked.

I will never have any procedures on my face again. I bitterly regret ever having surgery. I've learned the hard way that you can't cure emotional pain by changing anything about your face or body. Now I think that all I really needed was some therapy when I was younger, to help me come to terms with the pain of my parents' divorce.

I'm still worried about ageing - I've just turned 40 - but I can accept growing older now. I have the support of a loving husband, and a good job that keeps me fit and healthy. Finally, I can see I've got everything to live for."

'I thought she was beautiful from day one, and I still do'

Laura's husband, John Pillarella, 39, explains how he coped with his wife's surgery fixation:

"I first met Laura in a nightclub in our local town. We started chatting and I thought she was extremely attractive and we really hit it off. At first, her insecurity didn't come across - she would ask me if she thought her hair looked alright sometimes, or about her make-up, but that was all - so I was surprised when she told me she was thinking about having surgery on her eyes and chin. But I figured that if it would make her happy, I would support her in her decision. And I continued to support her throughout the rest of her ops.

Over the years, as she had more procedures, I never really felt she looked that different as the results were quite gradual. She always looks the same to me, anyway - beautiful. She never believes me when I tell her that, though. Laura is her own worst critic.

But the final surgery, to put right everything that had gone before, has helped her confidence no end. She's finally found some kind of contentment, if not happiness, with her looks. I don't feel like I'm married to a different woman with a different face, though. She's still the same person, after all. I thought she was beautiful from the first day I met her, and I still do."