Julie Chen has long been the cool and collected host of 'Big Brother,' and she's stuck with the reality series for a surprisingly long time. But hosting a reality show wasn't Julie's first gig, nor was her talk show stint on 'The Talk.'

Julie really got her start as a news anchor, which means she started out where everyone else in the industry does: the newsroom, behind the camera. But being an anchor was her dream in life, and it turned out she was willing to do almost anything to make it happen.

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To be fair, Julie's worked hard to get where she is. She didn't cheat her way to the top or suffer any significant scandals during her rise to fame (and fortune). Julie even once interned with Andy Cohen, and the two still rib each other about their shared past today.

She's had a humble past, but there was one secret she kept for a very long time. In 2013, Yahoo! reported on an interesting story Chen shared while hosting on 'The Talk.' With that interview, Julie revealed a secret that she had always kept to herself. But with the changing times, she felt like it was time to share.

Julie's "big secret" was that she underwent plastic surgery in order to make her dream career a reality.

Black and white school photo of Julie Chen - Julie Chen throwback photo

The story goes like this: Julie was 25 and was working as a newspaper reporter in Dayton, Ohio. When she approached her boss with the idea that she could fill in as a news anchor while the main anchors were off on vacation, the news director was hesitant. Essentially, it was Julie's appearance that was the 'problem,' he said.

Chen related that her boss elaborated "Let's face it Julie, how relatable are you to our community? How big of an Asian community do we have in Dayton? On top of that because of your Asian eyes, I've noticed that when you're on camera, you look disinterested and bored."

Julie was devastated, Yahoo! explained, and it was like "a dagger in my heart, because all of my life I wanted to be a network anchor." Worse, her boss was saying that it was Chen's looks that were the problem; her very genetics and her double eyelids.

Worse, when Julie started meeting with agents to get career advice, at least one of them echoed her boss's comments. That agent provided Julie with referrals to plastic surgeons, and she wound up having a procedure done on her eyelids.

And while she's still unsure whether the decision she made was truly the right one, Julie did say, "It got me to where we are today. And I'm not going to look back."

NEXT: 'Big Brother 22': How Much Does Host, Julie Chen Earn Per Season?