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Stars With Scars: Kate Middleton, Tina Fey & More

A-List Injuries

Kate Middleton recently revealed a hidden, three-inch scar on her head. See how other celebrities got theirs.

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Kate Middleton recently revealed a hidden three-inch scar on her head, while Prince William sports a similar mark. See how Harrison Ford, Tina Fey, Catherine Zeta-Jones and other celebrities got theirs.

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When Kate Middleton made her first solo appearance last weekend as a member of the royal family, a photograph revealed a previously unseen scar on the left side of her forehead. Initial speculation that it was the result of hair extensions was soon dismissed—the palace confirmed that “the scar related to a childhood operation” but refused to elaborate further. But the mark is just one of the many things the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have in common. In 2009, Prince William revealed that he had a “Harry Potter” scar on his forehead from a golf accident.

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Hollywood has provided Harrison Ford with two backstories for the famous scar on his chin. In Working Girl, Ford’s character explained that he’d hit his chin on the toilet when an old girlfriend tried to pierce his ear. And in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the scar was the result of teenage Indy’s inexperience with a whip. In reality, Ford says he got it when he was 20 and crashed a car while trying to buckle his seat belt.

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Though Catherine Zeta-Jones has long been suspected of having plastic surgery—which she has always denied—one thing she has not corrected is the small vertical scar on her neck, the result of a tracheotomy she had when she was an infant. "Makeup artists are always trying to cover it up, but I don't want to hide it," Zeta-Jones told People when she was first named to the magazine’s Most Beautiful list. "I wouldn't be here today if I didn't have this scar."

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 "People want the scars to be tribal scars,” Seal told Jet magazine about his face in 1996. “That's just the nature of the media and people’s imaginations.” In fact, the Grammy Award-winning singer developed discoid lupus erythematosus, which causes scarring of the skin, when he was 23. Over the years, Seal has worked with many Lupus charities, including performing at Lupus L.A.’s Orange Ball.

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In a 2009 Vanity Fair profile, Maureen Dowd finally revealed the mystery of Tina Fey’s faint facial scar: a stranger attacked her in her front yard with a pen when she was 5. “It’s impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it and glorifying it,” Fey told Dowd, adding that she “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, and it became a thing of ‘Oh, I guess we should use this side’ or whatever. Everybody’s got a better side.”

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Did Joaquin Phoenix get the scar on his mouth as a result of a harelip or cleft palate surgery? The actor isn’t saying, but given his rap career hoax, who would believe him anyway? Interestingly, Johnny Cash, whom Phoenix famously portrayed in 2005’s Walk the Line, also had a scar on his lip, the result of a cyst removal when he was in the Air Force.

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Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi claims the 7-inch scar on her right arm—the result of a car accident when she was a teenager—is her favorite part of her body. "I love it because it makes me a person who has an interesting past,” Lakshmi told Allure in 2009 after posing nude for the magazine. “And it reminds me that I can survive any pain."

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In January 2008, High School Musical star Zac Efron was rushed to the hospital to have an emergency appendectomy. But given that Efron frequently takes his shirt off for roles—and when paparazzi catch him on the beach—he’s reportedly been using emu oil to reduce the scar.

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Though Mary J. Blige has repeatedly refused to talk about the scar under her left eye—the result of a traumatic incident in her childhood—she’s never tried to remove it either. "If I don't accept the scar on my face, the lips that God gave me, the big giant feet, the long legs, whatever it is that I'm deformed with, I got to love it so everybody else can love it,” Blige told 60 Minutes in 2003. “And I started loving it."

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When your nickname is “Scarface,” it’s kind of hard to ignore the trait—and yet Al Capone would reportedly powder himself to diminish the mark, and he preferred to be photographed from his right side. Capone also claimed the scars were the result of a war wound in Italy, but in fact he received them after insulting the sister of a mobster when he was working as a bouncer at a Brooklyn club. When Capone refused to apologize, Frank Gallucio cut Capone three times on his cheek. Scarface later said he was sorry.

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