15 Celebrity Scars Stories

Here is a list of 15 Celebrities that are known to have visible scars and the story about how they got them.

1.  Jonah Hill

Jonah Hill, star of 21 Jump Street and The Wolf Of Wallstreet, reveals the origin of the mysterious, angry scar on his right arm that spiders past his elbow, too big and deep to hide. It looks like his arm was torn in half and then pulled back together, which is more or less what happened. “This is one of the biggest things ever in my life,” says Hill. When Hill was in middle school, his mom was battling cancer. Convinced that she was going to die, he started acting out (she’s since made a full recovery). He took up skateboarding & started smoking weed. His grades were bad. “I was, like, not a good kid,” he says. Hill was 15 when it all came to a head. He and a friend snuck out one night in an SUV. Hill stuck his elbow out the open window as they headed into the night, and his friend started turning the wheel back and forth, joking around. The car flipped over, skidded along the road and dragged Hill’s arm with it. Hill woke up in the hospital, and he heard two doctors discussing whether or not to amputate his arm. At the same time, he saw his dad and ailing mom crying. “I said to myself, ‘I’ll never let them down ever again.’ I said, ‘I’m going to be successful. I’m going to resurrect what I put these people through by being a little asshole.’ So I look at this scar every day. That reminds me to work hard.” Hill also has other, less-visible scars from the accident.

2.  Kaley Cuoco

“The Big Bang Theory” actress Kaley Cuoco completely crushed the bottom of her leg during a horseback riding incident in October of 2010. She went into emergency surgery following the accident, knowing there was a chance that she might lose her lower leg. “I had a freak accident,” Cuoco told Ellen DeGeneres. “It was the end of my lesson. I had been jumping all day. At the end of the lesson my horse spooked and I wasn’t really expecting it and I fell off. I was actually getting up but my horse was still kind of spooking. He was in the corner trying to get away from me. He leaped over me and landed on my leg.” She described the sound of her breaking bones as resembling crunching leaves. Surgeons inserted two steel bars in her leg to stabilize the shattered bone, leaving 2 scars. One just above the ankle bone on the outside of her leg, where the bone had protruded, and another, much longer surgical scar, running up the front of her leg from just above the foot. “The good thing about that is I know when it’s going to rain. I literally feel like I’m 110 years old ‘the storms are coming’,” she says.

3.  Harrison Ford

Almost any Harrison Ford fan can tell that his most famous facial feature is the scar on his chin. It is a trademark (although he never thought about it in that way, we do). How did he get it? “A fast car crash, a real mundane way of earning it”, he says. It happened in 1964. He had a job near Laguna Beach, California. One day while driving to work he tried to put his seat belt on, he lost control of his car and drove into a telephone pole, slamming his face into the steering wheel. He stood by the side of the road bleeding for hours, until somebody picked him up and drove him to the hospital. In his movies, it has been explained away in various ways. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had him cutting his chin with a whip when a kid. Working Girl saw him claim that, when trying to pierce his own ear as a teen, he’d fainted and smashed his chin on the toilet.

4.  Tina Fey

The large, thin scar on Tina Fey’s face came at the hands of a vicious attacker. Fey, who was just five at the time, was playing in the front yard of her Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, home when she was attacked by a stranger and violently slashed across the face with a knife. The attacker was never found. The comedian did not let it deter her dreams. “I proceeded unaware of it. I was a very confident little kid. It’s really almost like I’m kind of able to forget about it, until I was on-camera.” says Fey, whose scenes are often shot from the right side, “Then it became a thing of ‘Oh, I guess we should use this side’ or whatever. Everybody’s got a better side.”

5.  Tommy Flanagan

Tommy Flanagan got his first big break in the 1995 movie Braveheart which starred Mel Gibson. He’s also one of the stars of the TV series Sons of Anarchy, where he plays Chibs. Flanagan grew up in a rough part of Glasgow, Scotland. One night, when leaving a pub, a group of people attacked and tried to rob him. He fought back and was stabbed. The attackers slashed his face from ear to ear, leaving a wound known as a Glasgow Smile. He nearly lost his life, but survived and decided to become an actor.

6.  Inigo Montoya

In The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya is portrayed as a Spanish fencer and henchman to the Sicilian criminal Vizzini. Inigo’s father Domingo was a great swordcrafter, but he remained obscure because he disliked dealing with the stupid rich and privileged. When Count Rugen, a nobleman with a six-fingered right hand, asked him to forge a sword to accommodate his unusual grip, Domingo poured his heart and soul into the project. When Rugen returned, he reneged on his promised price. Thus, Domingo refused to sell him the sword, not as a matter of money, but because Count Rugen could not appreciate the great work of the sword. He proclaimed that the sword would now belong to Inigo. Angered, Rugen killed Domingo. Eleven-year-old Inigo witnessed the crime and challenged Rugen to a fight, wherein Rugen easily disarmed Inigo; he spared the boy’s life and allowed him to keep the sword, but scarred his face to “teach him a lesson”.

7. Seal

The scars that mark Nigerian born singer Seal have long been rumored to be anything from the result of a tribal scarification rite to self mutilation. The truth was reveled by Seal himself in a Rolling Stone interview. Seal told how as a child, he suffered from Discoid Lupus Erythematosus (DLE), a serious skin disease which causes inflammation, lesions, scarring and permanent hair loss. After years of treatment and surgery, Seal’s condition is now in remission and he has learned to love his scars.

8. Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and Mario Amaya, art critic and curator, at Warhol’s studio. Earlier on the day of the attack, Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script had apparently been misplaced. Amaya received only minor injuries. Warhol, however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived: surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again. He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life, including being required to wear a surgical corset. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol’s life and art. Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of explanation, she said that Warhol “had too much control over my life.” She was eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of Corrections. Warhol had this to say about the attack: “Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there. I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television—you don’t feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.”

9. Joaquin Phoenix

The scar between Joaquin Phoenix’s lip and nose is obvious. It practically had second billing in Gladiator. Many people assume that Joaquin Phoenix’s scar resulted from the surgical correction of a cleft palate, but Phoenix was actually born this way. His prominent scar was formed in utero as a mild form of cleft palate called a microform cleft. He refers to it as “Merely a birthmark”.

10. Queen Latifah

The two-inch scar that sits just under Queen Latifah’s hairline has been there the majority of her life. How did she get the scar? “Playing tag with my brother,” she said. “I tripped over the telephone cord and hit my head on the corner of the bathroom wall. I got three stitches. Then I fell on my grandmother’s steps and busted it open again. I was three. I was a clumsy child. I’d never cover it up, it gives my face character.”

11. Sharon Stone

Sharon Stone’s dramatic neck scar is one of the largest to be routinely concealed in publicity pics due to make-up and airbrushing. Nonetheless, the mark on her neck has made her one of the most popular celebrities with scars in Hollywood. Her scar on her neck is from a childhood accident. She was riding a horse and she ran into a taut clothes line which ripped her neck open. It is the only celebrity scar to merit its own website. Although SharonStonesScar.com is no longer online, it had a long life in internet years.

12. Parminder Nagra

At the age of seven, Parminder Nagra (star of ER, Alcatraz and The Blacklist) suffered a burn that resulted in the scar shown in her 2002 breakout role in the internationally acclaimed film Bend It Like Beckham. While preparing a meal, a gas stove set her trousers alight. She was taken into the bathroom by an uncle and immersed in cold water. However, when the trouser fabric was removed, it took skin with it, resulting in a large scar on her right leg. The story was included into the film to explain the burn of Parminder’s character. Although finding a decent picture of it online has turned out to be nearly impossible for me.

13. Michael K. Williams

Michael K. Williams is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Omar Little on the HBO drama series The Wire, and of Albert “Chalky” White on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. Williams is well known for his large facial scar, which he received during a bar fight. On his 25th birthday, Williams was involved in a bar fight between his friends and another group of men. His face and neck were sliced with a razor, and nearly killed him. The scar led to his being offered roles as a thug in music videos. He eventually embraced the scar, citing Seal’s scarred face as an inspiration. His scar became his signature and earned him photo shoots with noted photographers like David LaChapelle.

14. Padma Lakshmi

Actress and former host of Top Chef Padma Lakshmi has a large scar on her right arm. In 1984, when she was 14 years old, Lakshmi was in a car accident in Malibu, California. Her arm was shattered and her right hip was fractured. The injury to her right arm required surgery, which left a 7-inch scar between her elbow and shoulder. After surgery, she regained use of both her arm and hip. The incident took place on a Sunday afternoon as Lakshmi was being driven home from a Hindu temple in Malibu. She remembers a flash of orange, looking over to see the large car upon her. Padma describes the event in the April 2001 edition of Vogue, saying, “Being in a car crash was like an exhilarating hallucination, an unbelievable moment that oddly remains one of the most beautiful images in my memory.”, which is a very lovely way to describe something so horrific.

15. Catherine Zeta-Jones

When a little girl, Catherine Zeta-Jones contracted a virus that prevented her from breathing normally, and doctors were forced to perform the tracheotomy surgery. The surgery left a scar on Catherine’s neck. She could have the scar removed with a surgical procedure that involves sanding scar tissue, using a tool that wears the old scar tissue away. It’s a simple procedure, which requires only local anesthesia. But Catherine considers the scar a reminder of a life-changing event. She said, “Makeup artists are always trying to cover it up, but I don’t want to hide it. I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t have this scar.”