Cast member Jennifer Lawrence poses at the premiere of "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" in Los Angeles, California November 18, 2013.MARIO ANZUONI/Reuters
Just how far will the average person go to look like his or her favourite celebrity?
Or more to the point, how much will they spend?
In the case of a young Texas woman named Kitty (not her real name), the price tag was $25,000 (U.S.), which she happily dropped toward the bizarre goal of resembling Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence.
As detailed last week on ABC's Nightline, the Texas woman recently underwent a series of grueling surgical procedures to make her look like The Hunger Games star.
So why take such extreme measures? In the pre-op interview, Kitty said, "I can appreciate that her personality is spunky and fun. I can appreciate that her body is banging."
A big part of the inspiration, claimed Kitty, was that friends and strangers alike kept telling her how much she already looks like Lawrence.
Said Kitty: "I'm not trying to look like Pamela Anderson during her Baywatch days. I'm trying to look like a very capable, very personal level-headed female who is an Academy Award winner."
Yep, that sounds like ample rationale to go under the knife.
Kitty also allowed that, as a mother, she wanted to get back her post-baby body.
"The reason why I decided to get surgery is because post having my daughter, I wasn't quite as comfortable with my body," she said on Nightline. "I don't think you have to be crazy to want to look better or feel better about yourself. That's not crazy."
The Nightline segment tracked Kitty's four weeks of surgery that took place in February at the First Surgical Hospital in Houston and cost her approximately $25,000 (that figure was already minus the discount deducted by plastic surgeons for the publicity).
In brisk succession, Kitty had liposuction performed on her face and body, a breast augmentation, rhinoplasty and fat grafts to her cheeks and buttocks.
All told, the procedures took an estimated six hours on the table, which was followed by several weeks of recovery for Kitty.
Kitty's surgeon, Dr. Franklin Rose, said that he routinely tracks the mental well-being of patients who request celebrity lookalike makeovers.
"You can tell very quickly, within a matter of a minute, if the patient is well-adjusted or not well-adjusted for whatever the procedure they might present," Dr. Rose told Nightline.
Dr. Rose also said that he's seen a growing number of women requesting famous-people makeovers.
"Patients come in wanting to have lips like Angelina Jolie, breasts like Scarlett Johansson, Megan Fox," he said.
But in Kitty's case, all she wanted was to look like the star of American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook. The post-op tension was sustained throughout the Nightline segment right up to the moment of the big unveiling.
Kitty didn't actually look a whole lot like Jennifer Lawrence, but she seemed more than happy with the results, which only shows that celebrity makeover beauty is more in the eye of the subject than the beholder.
The more shocking reveal: Kitty admitted that the money she had spent was originally intended to start a college fund for her daughter.
"Basically the money that I had for this was money that I had saved from a previous job," rationalized Kitty. "So it was sort of a 'me fund.' My child's only 5 and I'm still just barely 30, so I still feel it's naivete, but I still have some time to rack up some money to help her when the time comes."
Hello, Kitty, that time already came and went.