Bombastic jungle campmate Ruby Wax is looking as fresh-faced at 72 as she is proving highly entertaining. Here, we look at her changing looks across the years…
A make-up free Ruby arriving at Brisbane airport for her jungle adventure(Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Iconic American-British comedian Ruby Wax is already proving to be absolute TV gold Down Under on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!
While some viewers can’t get enough of the colourful celebrity’s straight-talking humour, others are finding her a tad offensive. One thing’s for sure, Ruby does things her way – and that includes when it comes to ageing.
The star, 72, has already delivered some classic moments in the jungle, from forming an unlikely bond with social media star Angry Ginge (and telling him to ‘get out of the way’ as he was stealing her light’), as fans call for the pair to have their own show together, to asking when ‘room service’ is available and regaling camp with wild showbiz stories – such as that time she shared a plane with now-US president, Donald Trump.
The comedienne is one of the famous faces braving the jungle this year(Image: ITV)
But fans at home are equally fascinated with how Ruby, who often shares her love of cold water swimming on Instagram as part of her healthy lifestyle, has achieved those fresh-faced looks into her 70s – and just how different she looked when her career was first taking off.
The mother-of-three, who was awarded an OBE for services to mental health in 2015, has only addressed having cosmetic surgery publicly once, and that was in an interview with the Guardian 15 years ago, when she was 56. Asked if she’d had any work done then, she admitted, she’d had a little.
Ruby aged 35 holding a plate of hamburgers (after the first jungle trial she joked: “I think for those six stars we should’ve had a burger and not one of those penis things.”(Image: TV Times/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
“If you had it in Joan Rivers’s time, in the stone age, you would’ve made a big mistake, but it’s very sophisticated now. I’ve had tiny bits … whether I’d do a whole facelift, I don’t know. In TV, people don’t tolerate ageing.”
With her trademark humour, she also humorously put her “very wrinkle-free face” down to a very expensive moisturiser and her “good Polish skin” (her parents, Edward and Berthe Wachs, were Austrian Jews who grew up in Vienna), adding at the time that “wrinkles can be de-wrinkled in minutes thanks to the miracle of dermatology”.
A curly-haired Ruby at 44, meeting Baywatch icon Pamela Anderson(Image: BBC)
As well as the ‘little bit’ of cosmetic surgery she’s mysteriously confessed to, Ruby has also said that she has lip enhancement once a year, to plump up her lips – and uses a prescription American product to grow her eyelashes.
She also revealed that once she spotted dark circles under her eyes, she had them “hoiked” (surgically removed) almost immediately after noticing them.
The comedian aged 47 – she claimed her TV work dried up when she hit 50 due to her age(Image: Getty Images)Ruby circa 2002 aged 49, at the London premiere of the film The Importance of Being Earnest(Image: Justin Goff Photos/Getty Images)
And it seems the star, who was a script editor for hit 2000s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, is no fan of ageing – or at least, of what she maintains becomes to women when they reach a certain age, particularly in the public eye.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain host Kate Garraway in for Life Stories in 2023, she slammed the BBC for axing her A-list interview show when she hit 50.
A svelte Ruby snapped in 2003 with pals, the late David Guest and Liza Minelli(Image: Getty Images)Ruby held her own when she met the fresh-faced Spice Girls in 2008 for her show Ruby Wax Meets(Image: BBC ONE)
Asked by Kate, ‘So why did the television shows dry up?” she replied: ‘Because I turned 50 and that’s not allowed,’ to which the host asked: ‘So it was an age thing?’ Ruby replied: ‘Of course.”
In a 2024 interview, the jungle star opened up on her general dislike for discussions about ageing, revealing that her own mother used to lie about her age – which made it a source of ‘shame’ for the funny woman.
Looking distinctly younger than her 65 years in 2018(Image: Getty Images)Ruby was at a film festival in Dinard, France just a month before she jetted off to the jungle(Image: WireImage)
She has previously confessed that “getting old is something that happens to other people, not me” – and said for her it’s a ‘constant battle with ageing’.
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