Some people come to Hollywood to plant their feet in the stars' footprints at Graumann's Chinese Theater. My destination is a building stars tiptoe in and out of, leaving no tracks: the Santa Monica office of Steven M. Hoefflin, Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon. Hoefflin is the Los Angeles cosmetic surgeon of the moment. "Everybody goes to him and few talk about it," says Joan Rivers, one of the rare celebrities candid enough to admit to being a Hoefflin patient. "Steve has a wall of pictures in his office—recognizable faces—signed 'Thank you,' 'Thank you,' 'Thank you,'" she says. "You can't believe the caliber of the people."

Believe it. There's Elizabeth Taylor, Jessica Hahn, and Phyllis Diller, to name just a few. Hoefflin's clientele "is so star- studded," quips Rivers, "the carpet is worn out at the back entrance the celebrities use." (Elizabeth Taylor, it's murmured, came to the back door once, and no one heard the bell.)

Right behind the entertainment types are the rich and prominent, from Middle Eastern princesses to ex-Trump princess Ivana Trump. "Steve was prominent before, but Ivana really put him on the map," says Rivers. "He took Ivana from a hard-looking woman to the most soft, beautiful woman." Ivana, however, has denied being "reborn or remodeled." Hoefflin, she told the Toronto Star, is just a "personal friend."

Hoefflin is adamant about confidentiality; all of my attempts to confirm patients' names with his office elicited a response icy enough to anesthetize the site of a collagen shot. Several times a day, the doctor's receptionist tells callers, "It is our policy not to discuss patients"—not even Phyllis Diller, who lists Hoefflin on a press release as the surgeon of her most recent body work. The only patient Haefflin will talk about is his very first—the pet chicken he operated on when he was eight to remove BBs the poor fowl had swallowed. "I was convinced then I would be a surgeon," he says.

But word leaks out. Paparazzi stake out the parking lot where the doctor parks his low-key Chevy Blazer. Almost every L.A. limo driver has deposited some notable at the Hoefflin Building, a two-story, red-brick Colonial with a perfectly manicured lawn, across the street from Santa Maruca Hospital.

"We live in a land of narcissism," says Arnold Klein, Michael Jackson's (and many other stars') dermatologist. "Show business is an area where appearance is a valuable commodity. Some people have face-lifts before they need them," says Klein. "They have good genes to start with. They do not come for a redo; they come for a touch-up. And that's harder work. The art is in millimeters." Says one of his colleagues, "Hoefflin does more face-lifts than anyone in this community, with consistently good results." (And he also has arguably the highest prices in the country.)

"My face-lift specialty," says Hoefflin, "is the attractive, youthful, natural appearance. It's easier when there are fewer time changes to deal with." And that's the problem with the Hoefflin bandwagon, carps another plastic surgeon: "If you can't get a good result on Ivana Trump, you might as well give up. The tough ones are the overweight 65- year-olds with a lot of sun damage." But patients are convinced that Hoefftin can supply that extra millimeter of genius.

Oddly, considering the buzz on Hoefflin, the man is an enigma. Celebrity photo services can barely dig up a picture of him. Few people know how to pronounce his name (Hoefflin sounds like Hoffman) or spell it. One out-of-town patient says she searched for him for years because she had the wrong spelling. Even 20/20, the television show, got his name wrong in a transcript of its segment on Phyllis Diller. Some insiders believe that the celebrity plastic surgeon played by George Hamilton in the film Doc Hollywood was a parody of Hoefflin, who, like the Hamilton character, displays pictures of himself prominently.(Interestingly, Hoefflin was the medical adviser on the film.) However, any other resemblance to Hamilton's vain Hollywood surgeon ends there. "Steve is on top because he doesn't know he's made it," says an old friend. "He's in awe of his high-profile patients and doesn't realize they're in awe of him."

Hoefflin, who can be demanding of his staff, is the model of understanding with the perfection-seeking patients others might brand plastic surgery addicts. Joan Rivers says she switched to Hoefflin after another surgeon refused to thin her nose. "Steve doesn't play God," she says. But some critics say Hoefflin has gone too far with Michael Jackson. "Jackson's nose is not Hoefflin's best moment," says a leading plastic surgeon.

Hoefflin has all the right credentials. He's board certified in plastic surgery and is a member of the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. "Steve is a good man," says a colleague, "but he'll never get in the Association"—the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, a small group whose members have made major research and teaching contributions to the field. Only a dozen or so new members are invited in each year to replace members who have died or retired. "Being a celebrity and an academician are incompatible," says the doctor. "Surgeons to the stars don't get in."

But Santa Monica plastic surgeon Harvey Zarem, professor emeritus of UCLA's medical school, who trained Hoefflin, defends his student: "Steve is willing to take the chance and go beyond the ordinary. Not every patient wants the extreme. But for those who do—often people in the entertainment world—Steve will go the extra measure."

Seattle-born and San Fernando Valley-raised, Hoefflin, who is descended from a governor of Chihuahua, Mexico, overcame his inauspicious start at a Mexican medical school—the one credential omitted from his otherwise comprehensive curriculum vitae. After rising to the top of his class of 2,000 there, he transferred in his third year to the prestigious UCLA School of Medicine, where he peaked again, winning several honors upon graduation, including the coveted Surgical Medal. Hoefflin originally wanted to be a heart surgeon but settled on plastic surgery, he says, "because I liked seeing the results."

Hoefflin, who is assistant clinical professor of plastic surgery at UCLA, went into practice in 1977 and was busy from the start. "I was making a living from the first day," he says, recalling how he worked out of four locations, caring for burn cases at one hospital, operating on industrial hand injuries at another, doing trauma and skin-cancer work at a third, and sharing an office with celebrity plastic surgeon Roy Machida. Machida had been an associate of one of L.A.'s first celebrity plastic surgeons, the late Frank Ashley, another of Hoefflin's teachers, Ashley did Phyllis Diller's early cosmetic work and reconstructed Ann-Margret's face after she fell off a stage in Lake Tahoe.

Hoefflin positioned himself in that line of succession. Early in his practice, he developed a following among models and show girls because of his interest in the complications from breast augmentation—especially the hardening of the breast. "I tried to solve this, with some success, by inserting the implant through the armpit, under the muscle," says Hoefflin. ("If he can solve the hard-breast problem, he'll win the Nobel prize," says one skeptical New York surgeon.) "Word got out that I was good at this," says Hoefflin, not bragging in any way. He was soon getting referrals from people at Playboy. Marilyn Grabowski, the magazine's West Coast photo editor, became his biggest booster. "I started recommending him to celebrities, and it mushroomed," she says. Grabowski herself was one of Hoefflin's toughest challenges. She had lost most of her nose in an automobile accident and was undergoing many operations. "Everyone said it was hopeless," she says. "I begged Steve to operate on me." Eventually he did, building her nose up a little at a time. "To me he's God," she says.

Perhaps the biggest boost to Hoefflin's career was acquiring Michael Jackson as a patient. (The caricatures Jackson did of Hoefflin that used to hang in one of the doctor's treatment rooms are no longer in evidence.) Although the doctor is mum on the Jackson connection, the relationship can be traced through press reports, friends' recollections, and, indirectly, the doctor's lectures and articles on the black nose. (While Jackson told Oprah Winfrey that he has had only two plastic surgery procedures, author J. Randy Taraborrelli, in Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness, says he has had at least four.)

In 1979, Jackson tripped onstage and broke his nose. He had always wanted a nose job, writes Taraborrelli, and "now he had no choice." The result of Jackson's nose operation can be seen on Jackson's Off the Wall album cover.

Hoefflin's interest in black rhinoplasty dates back to his surgical training at UCLA, he explains, when "these patients were told that nothing could be done for them. It's the same as with people with heavy thighs. In Mexico the girls used nostril implants to push up the nose."

In a chapter on the black nose in the just-published Rhinoplasty: State of the Art, Hoefflin tells how, 15 years ago, reduction operations on non-Caucasian noses "often yielded unsatisfactory results." He recognized a desire in patients for "more of a tip projection than one would anticipate" and began using what he calls the pea-pod graft. Using cartilage from behind the ear, a standard procedure today, he shores up the tip and gives it more definition.

By the time Jackson embarked on his 1981 Triumph tour, Taraborrelli notes, Jackson's nose was "thinner and more defined." In January 1984, while filming a commercial extravaganza for Pepsi, Jackson's hair caught fire. Hoefflin rushed to Jackson's bedside and had him transferred to the burn unit at Brotman Medical Center, where Hoefflin was chief of plastic surgery. Jackson subsequently gave $1 million he received from Pepsi to the burn unit, which was renamed the Michael Jackson Burn Center. (The center was closed in 1987 for lack of funds.)

In the spring of 1984, Taraborrelli writes, Hoefflin worked on Jackson's nose again. When Jackson received a White House award that year, Nancy Reagan remarked that Jackson was much prettier than Diana Ross. "Certainly his nose has been done," Reagan said. "I wonder about his cheekbones." Jackson had yet another nose procedure—his fourth—in June 1986 and also had a cleft put in his chin, says Taraborrelli. "Michael Jackson loves Steve, depends on him, wants him with him all the time," says Marilyn Grabowski.

The relationship has brought both attention and criticism to Hoefflin. "I simply must have the name of his plastic surgeon," said Joan Collins of Jackson. "I adore his nose." But not everyone does. "We always say, 'Don't judge Steve by Michael Jackson,'" says one of Hoefflin's admiring colleagues. When plastic surgeons gather, they often debate whether Hoefflin has done too much on Jackson. People wonder, Does Hoefflin ever say no to a patient?

"People have come to every plastic surgeon asking for a complete change of identity, down to their fingerprints," says Hoefflin. "I say no. And if the result a patient is looking for does not meet my aesthetic or safely standards, I will say no." But he will consider the surgery "if a patient feels so strongly and it's within your ability to do it," Hoefflin says. "These decisions are subjective," he explains. "Good surgery opens the door for people to improve themselves."

In 1985, Hoefflin opened the office of his dreams—complete with his own hospital—quality operating rooms and a three-bed recovery room. Hoefflin put into practice ideas he had been jotting down since medical school about how to set up and furnish an office. There is a folksy quality to the place that doesn't jibe with the doctor's taste for Armani-ish suits. It was designed "to give an enjoyable experience to the patient," says the doctor. It also seems calculated to build confidence in the doctor through an overabundance of diplomas and to generate instant intimacy with information about his family, hobbies, and connections. Every examining room has a theme. "Patients at UCLA used to complain about the sterile examining rooms," explains Hoefflin. So his Sculpture Gallery (where patients' "before" pictures are taken) features casts and busts by the doctor. The Heritage Room is lined with memorabilia of Hoefflin's family tree (he is also the great-great-grandson of President William Henry Harrison). The Magic Theatre holds part of Hoefflin's magic collection. In the surgical wing, where treatment rooms are named for resorts, there are cat posters on the ceiling of the Palm Springs Room. It may be kitschy, but the personal decor helps patients relax and bond with the doctor.

Hoefflin is known for doing magic tricks socially, and if you talk to his patients, they say what he does in the operating room is magic, that there's less swelling and a faster recovery after a Hoefflin face-lift. But the doctor says. "I don't want to be thought of as having some special secret. A lot of magic is common sense. I have no magical surgical solutions. When I operate, I take a lot of time stopping small bleeding points. I only do two face-lifts a day. There's a very high risk dealing with people who are very visible. You're scrutinized by the world. There's a lot of responsibility. The good results come from preparing them before and after. I spend a lot of time preparing those patients."

The instructions Hoefflin hands out before surgery are exhaustive. His Your Personal Plastic Surgery Guide and Checklist, 55 pages long, keeps patients so busy that they have no time to worry before their operations. There are pre-op diets, post-op diets ("don't overlook baby food"); things to do two weeks before surgery ("smoking: ... think DAMAGE"), one day prior ("do not wear false eyelashes"), and the morning of ("come to the atrium doors ... ring if the doors are locked").

He believes "the patients' experience begins when they start thinking about plastic surgery—and the experience is never completed. It lasts an entire life." That's why he includes in his fee 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-up visits, and also why he says in his guide: "Many of our patients are so pleased with the improvement in their appearance that they choose to have additional cosmetic procedures performed." Joan Rivers is typical. "We tweak it every couple of years," she says. "He thinned my nose, did a mini face-lift and a mini peel. Never a lot. I'm never out for more than a few days." She bestowed Hoefflin face-lifts and other procedures on her staff for Christmas gifts a few years ago.

In 1989, Hoefflin got a license to practice in New York. He wanted "to accommodate patients where they live." The only problem, he explains, was, "How do you move your entire staff?" His solution has been to use the accredited surgical center of a friend, plastic surgeon Lawrence Reed, on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hoefflin says he has operated there only once. Hoefflin and Reed have a reciprocal arrangement, says a Reed spokesperson. Hoefflin patients who have questions while in New York are advised to call Reed, and vice versa.

Celebrity doctors usually have eight- to ten-year reigns in Hollywood, says one Beverly Hills face-watcher. Eventually Steven Hoefflin will be superseded by the next Doc Hollywood. Until then, his colleagues will have to deal with his mystique. "We would all like to be the hot surgeon of the moment," says Los Angeles plastic surgeon Stephen Genender. "But the truth is, a doctor like Steven who does good work and has a high profile is a very tangible asset to all of us."

It remains to be seen how his colleagues will respond to Hoefflin's latest enthusiasm—the "genetic fountain of youth." Some may call it science fiction, he says. But he adds that it's every doctor's dream to see the genetic information that exists in each skin cell treated biochemically to reproduce a "younger version of oneself"—a clone. "It may not be too farfetched," says Hoefflin, adding that the technology is not that far off.

And when that day comes, celebrities will have a hard time denying their genetic rejuvenation to Oprah.