No one tells you this about Turkey teeth – but they make you look OLDER: I spent nearly £7,000 transforming my smile. But I have realised doing it at my age was a terrible mistake: LIZ JONES

My female crush is Keira Knightley. I’m so in love – the voice, the eyebrows, the slightly higgledy-piggledy teeth – that I will devour the second season of Black Doves when it launches on Netflix next week. I have watched her in Atonement countless times. She’s luminous, I think, as her imperfect smile lights up the screen. Charming. Real.

But I watched that film again the other day and was horrified to realise it’s no longer Knightley who catches my eye, but Vanessa Redgrave.

Her character, Briony, comes of age during the war, before the birth of the NHS. She endured rationing and is now elderly, dying of vascular dementia. But never mind all that – look at her teeth! They could blind a man at 50 paces.

Even and modern and expensive, they bear no relation to her hardship, her history or her age.

And then it hit me. ‘Oh my God, no,’ I shuddered, ‘I’ve turned into Vanessa Redgrave!’

For years I had stains, countless fillings, cracked veneers and receding lower gums. But since travelling to Istanbul for new Turkey teeth last year, I now have perfect, young pearly whites. They are beautiful and natural.

The only problem? They are encased in an old face.

I had hoped they would give me a new lease of life after I’d destroyed the enamel during my teens and 20s, subsisting as I did – I suffered from anorexia nervosa for decades – on TaB soft drinks and Cox’s apples.

I wanted the perfect teeth of the Princess of Wales and every other woman in the public eye. I would be more confident, sociable, unashamed to kiss a man or laugh in daylight.

So, much like the 200,000 other Britons who travel to Turkey for dentistry work each year, I decided to try it myself.

At a high-tech clinic in Istanbul, immaculate new, Armageddon-proof crowns were fitted on to my now drilled-to-teeny stubs, using AI and lasers for precision.

I also had a gum transplant, in which flesh was sliced from the roof of my mouth then sewn in place to cover my exposed roots (the term ‘long in the tooth’ is apt).

My new smile would have cost me £30,000 in the UK, while in Turkey my treatment cost just under £7,000, excluding flights and hotels.

Back home, I did indeed feel like a different person. I gave up red wine, in case my teeth were sullied. I smiled more.

I felt positive, taking more care about my appearance in general, not going to bed in the same sweater I’d been wearing all day.

My teeth became something to live up to. Not let down. But try telling that to the rest of me.

I have hammocks each side of my mouth and the skin on my chin is pitted like a crumpet. I wanted to feel ten years younger, but it’s as though my new teeth are shining a megawatt torch on my imperfections, highlighting my decrepitude.

Indeed, my 24 perfect crowns are now body shaming the rest of me. Even my Uber Eats delivery guy noticed my smile, commenting: ‘My God, your teeth are amazing.’ Before noting down my date of birth on his phone, doing a double take, then shaking his head.

It’s as though I’m wearing a miniskirt; inappropriate, somehow.

And so my shiny new gnashers have become another way for me to feel like a fraud, unhappy in my skin.

I am like Bette Davis in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane: a grizzled, grotesque ghoul in babyish ribbons and lace, the daubed rouge and painted eyebrows only emphasising her loss of youth.

Feminist academic Kathleen Stock wrote in an essay that modern plastic surgery is now skewing physiognomy: the notion you can literally see someone’s mind or soul in their body and face; that reliable associations can be made between moral character and appearance traits.

She writes: ‘It starts to look psychopathic that we culturally approve of faces being sliced up and rearranged into stiffly impersonal, generic masks, for no other reason than the owner’s vanity.’

She even accuses plastic surgeons, and by extension cosmetic dental surgeons, of violent assault.

‘When you look in the mirror, the eyes, nose and mouth may all be in roughly the right places, but even you may not be able to tell who is looking back.’

At the moment, if I gurn in the mirror, I’m reminded of Donald Sutherland playing Lizzie Bennet’s dear old dad in the 2005 film of Pride & Prejudice. A toothy ghoul!

Kris Jenner, the 70-year-old Kardashian matriarch, now resembles her daughters after a facelift. Doubtless, she feels she is now the best version of herself. Thing is, she never looked this good, even when she was young. She has erased her history.

I’m guilty of the same vandalism. I no longer, thanks to my Turkey teeth, have a chipped front tooth.

When I was 12, my mum was washing my hair in the kitchen, as it was the only room with a small, electric heater. I was giggling so much, I crashed my teeth against the edge of the sink. Mum was devastated, and the chipped tooth meant I spent most of my youth with a hand in front of my mouth.

That reminder of how Mum tried to give me a life that was warm and happy is now erased. My smile is identical to that of a million social media influencers.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret my new teeth at all. My mouth is now healthier, aesthetically pleasing and pain-free.

But just as you land on holiday in the bright light of the Med and realise that black jacket is stained and your knees are hairy, so I realise the rest of me doesn’t quite measure up.

Of course, there is nothing more ageing than to lose one’s teeth: the face collapses, false teeth click and then sit – a blatant reminder of age and neglect – on a bedside table.

But be careful what you wish for. Your face and body, should you opt for expensive procedures, can resemble the Forth Bridge: no sooner do you fix one bit, another cracks.

And here’s a jarring collision – Kris Jenner might look like her daughters, but does she have their energy, curiosity, drive, passion?

It’s the pressure we put on ourselves – believing the lie we must look perfect to feel happy (I’m single, which doesn’t help) – that is rotten.

Not our teeth at all.

I recently decided to try to shore up my face, living up to my teeth, by visiting a clinic just off Harley Street. The bill for a raft of treatments – Thermage skin tightening, lasers for brown spots and thread veins – would cost about £6,000. Yikes.

But, having my make-up done for yet another photoshoot, I’m given a great tip by the make-up artist: ‘You need to fly to Korea. It’s the new Turkey for face work.’

I’m sorely tempted…