The Face of Hollywood: Dr. Raj Kanodia

[highlight_text] Some of the high-profile actors and models that are considered “most attractive” happen to have the most symmetrical faces. [/highlight_text]

Dr. Raj Kanodia has an eye for beauty, a love for symmetry and for the aesthetically pleasing. This love manifests itself in many ways, not just through the noses that he carefully sculpts on some of the most well-known and appreciated faces in Hollywood (Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, and Ashlee Simpson included), but through each and every aspect of his life.

His home, set in exclusive Bel Air, is a prime example of his constant quest to surround himself with the utmost levels of beauty. He bought the property more than a decade ago and promptly gave it what he refers to as a “facelift.” The result is an Italian Renaissance-style estate that is nothing short of amazing. The 7,000-square-foot main home features five bedrooms, seven baths, and a 600-bottle wine cellar. The 41,000-square-foot property, which was featured on Spike TV’s Fab Life: Really Rich Real Estate, also boasts a 2,000-square-foot guesthouse and a four-tiered garden.

It is in this garden that Kanodia manages to create even more beauty. He spends time every morning sculpting the landscape, cultivating the flora, spreading the resplendent visuals across his land. “One of my hobbies is to find really rare plants and once they establish themselves, I make cuttings and propagate them,” he says. “I started with five small Hawaiian ginger; I probably have 5,000 now.”

He goes on to discuss how he works to create symmetry in the plants, and how that symmetry is pleasing to the eye (and not just of the beholder). In fact, science has proven that symmetrical features are more aesthetically enjoyable, even in human faces. Some of the high-profile actors and models that are considered “most attractive” happen to have the most symmetrical faces.

Unfortunately, the aging process can rob people of such symmetry, diminishing what once was a natural beauty. And while the former Dr. 90210 star may be most known his work on noses, Kanodia is also Hollywood’s go-to guy for fillers and injectables. “As we age, the fat in the face disappears,” he explains. “It is sort of the skin’s cushion or the padding, and when it’s gone, the face starts to sag, almost like a silk dress that has lost its lining and gets crinkled.” Through the use of Botox and Juvéderm, Kanodia is able to pad the face, thus re-establishing youthful contour and volume without patients having to go under the knife.

He does so with the deft eye of an artist, unlike many of his colleagues who are responsible for the over-stuffed lips and unmoving foreheads that dominate sites such as Awfulplasticsurgery.com. But, like any great artist, he comes at a prohibitive price that keeps his clientele very exclusive. “Plastic surgery is art,” he explains. “If you analyze it, you can buy ‘art’ for two dollars at Walmart, or you can buy a painting in a museum or big gallery for $20 million. The difference is not the paint, not the canvas, not the frame. The difference is the artist.” And Kanodia is one of the best in his field. There is no room for doubt that he has an eye for the fine balance between the shape of the lips and the protrusion of the chin and cheeks, and, of course, the shape of the nose. This has established Kanodia as one of the most coveted surgeons in the entire country, with patients often traveling thousands of miles for consultations.

Because, in today’s world (and especially in Los Angeles), life seems to comes down to the survival of the prettiest. Take, for example, Ashlee Simpson. Before her much-publicized rhinoplasty, her career was tanking and she seemed destined to live in her sister’s shadow. Now, just two years since the procedure, she is married with a baby on the way, her career has been reinvigorated, and she is seemingly exponentially happier. This is a trend Kanodia sees repeated almost daily in his Beverly Hills office, where he performs some 300 rhinoplasties per year, many on 16- or 17-year-old girls. “Because they are so young, so many things are happening-they are going out, socializing, dating for the first time,” he explains. “What happens is, by fixing, say, a big bump on the nose that they have been self-conscious about for their whole life, they conquer their life, the world….It is almost a life-changing experience, not only for the patient but for the people around them because of the confidence they exude and the happiness they feel within. Some people say that plastic surgery is about superficial beauty, and that beauty is all in the eye of the beholder-all of those clichés. But the fact of the matter is we all want to put our best face forward. We all want to be happy and healthy and wealthy and beautiful. It is part of our present day society.”

But he is quick to remind us that it is not all about outward beauty. “The nose is the center of the face,” he says. “In terms of aesthetics, it sets the tone, but in terms of breathing-breath is life.” With this in mind, Kanodia’s goal is to always make his patients be able to breathe better by fixing deviated septums. Such was the highly publicized case with the rhinoplasties of Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz, who both said on record that they went to Kanodia to fix deviated septums. He confirms their claims to be true, and he is so happy to have been able to help.

The ability to make his patients’ lives better is what originally attracted Kanodia to his chosen field. When he was a young boy in India, he became enthralled with the practice of medicine when a doctor made a house visit to care for his ailing mother. “I wanted that kind of respect from taking care of someone,” he recalls. “Combine that with my passion for beauty, and I think the natural result was plastic surgery: medicine and art.”

This combination also manifests itself in his skincare line, Ayurmedics, a wordplay on Ayurveda, the ancient Indian branch of medicine. He replaced the “v” with an “m” to denote the line’s medical base. “It is a blend of Eastern and Western philosophies,” he explains. Through the skincare line, the injectables, the rhinoplasties, and the garden, Kanodia is continually striving to make our world just a little bit more beautiful than he found it, and that, I think, is certainly a beautiful thing.