Coronation Street's Lisa George 'petrified' after having surgery without anaesthetic

Coronation Street icon Lisa George has candidly opened up about going under the knife to change her appearance. The 54-year-old star is best known for playing Beth Tinker in the long-running soap from 2011 to 2024.

Away from she has also made appearances on other much-loved shows including and Casualty - and was even a contestant on in 2020 where she was paired with Tom Naylor and made it to fifth place. Away from the TV screen, however, Lisa admits she has struggled with her confidence.

Lisa explained that she became self-conscious about her appearance after her star power rose after she joined the cast of . She even stopped smiling in photographs as she battled low self-esteem.

Lisa struggled with the appearance of her eyes, which she felt were accentuated by the heavy makeup she was caked in to play Beth on the ITV soap. The actress was particularly distracted by the way the makeup made her eyelids look like they were "sagging."

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She told the "They’d put all this eyeshadow on my eyes and it sort of sat in all the wrinkles and it just looked like it has been dragged across my eyelid and I hated the way it looked. I was just so unhappy but I didn’t have the confidence to do anything about it.

"No one ever said anything to me, there were no comments, it was more about me being critical of myself. It was just really bothering me. Every time I was putting my make-up on, there were my eyes. I didn’t ever like smiling in photographs because of the way my eyes looked."

Lisa shared photographs of herself around a Blepharoplasty surgery that she underwent, taking a year to decide to go through with the procedure while she balanced the pros and the risks. The soap star essentially had excess skin "burned" off her eyelids via the procedure, and also had a brow lift.

The operations were performed in January and a year after Lisa was diagnosed with non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) a genetic eye condition which causes a drop in blood flow and oxygen to the optic never which can cause vision loss.

Discussing the day of her surgery, Lisa explained that doctors told her they would have to perform the operation without general anaesthesia because she has diabetes. She recounted to the publication: "I was absolutely petrified. I just assumed they’d give me a general anaesthetic and I’d wake up and it would be all over."

Lisa explained that due to her diabetes and concerns over her sugar levels, she could only be given a local anaesthetic. This was not something she could have expected. She recalled thinking 'what am I doing?' throughout the procedure.

Despite her concerns, Lisa praised the medical staff, revealing she didn't feel a thing throughout the procedure, and the team also had music playing while she had the operation to ease her nerves.

As she continued her chat, Lisa explained she had turned down some work in order to undergo her surgery and recover from it - but she hopes to be back on TV soon. She added that she has changed her hair and lost weight since leaving the ITV soap and hopes to land a role on a show like Rivals, which streams via Disney+.

Since undergoing surgery, Lisa has certainly been feeling more confident and has been showing off her new look online. Taking to recently, she shared two snaps of herself posing in a white dress.

Sharing the images on her main feed, she added a caption stating: "Thank you all so much for the love recently, means the " along with a white heart emojis. She added hashtags writing: #newme #feelingthelove.

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