She may have a bold, in-your-face sense of humor, but Irish-American comedian Kathy Griffin wasn’t always so confident.

When Griffin began her career in L.A., she was extremely insecure about her body, and went to great extremes to obtain the thin, perfectly sculpted Hollywood look.

At the age of 26, when the “My Life on the D-List” star was trying to land an agent in L.A., she decided to get a nose job.

"I was told repeatedly, 'You would be pretty if it weren't for that nose,' 'You'd work more if it weren't for that nose,' 'Hey, have you considered getting a nose job?' " Griffin told People.com while promoting her upcoming memoir, “Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin.”

"You would think I had a nose the size of Texas. I was young and impressionable and I was told that enough that I started to believe it, so I got a nose job.”

Griffin eventually took a star turn when she landed a role on Brooke Shield’s hit TV series, “Suddenly Susan.”

But getting her big break made the actress even more insecure about her body and weight. Griffin recalls crash-dieting, taking back-to-back step aerobic classes and starving herself all day and binging at night.

"I lost 15 pounds friggin' fast in Season 1," she said.

The fiery-haired celeb took her weight loss routine a step further when she began to take illegal pills.

"I am very proud of my two weeks on speed," she joked. "It was full-on illegal speed. I took it to lose weight, which is not very smart."

When Griffin turned back to plastic surgery to solve her body image issues, things took a dangerous turn – complications from liposuction 10 years ago almost killed her.

The comedian shows never-before-seen post-surgical pictures in her new book, due out this month, and though she says they’re “embarrassing, she wants , “women to know that this is what lipo looks like. Like, are you sure you don't want to just work out a little more?”

These days, Griffin stays in shape with plain-old diet and exercise, and is proud to show off her bikini-ready body in the tabloids. She recently posed in several revealing bathing suits in “OK!” magazine.

But the star says she has no idea why she was obsessed with her body in the first place.

"What I can't figure out is why I wasted time worrying about my looks,” she told People. “I am a comedian. I'm not on the runway in Milan.

“Believe it or not, people don't come to see me really thinking I'm going to look like Jennifer Aniston."