Call it Jersey Sore. One day after crashing into a police car in Florence, MTV's pocket powerhouse lost her driver's license and was seen sporting a neck brace as she filmed scenes around the Italian city. But was it all an act? As TMZ reported, Snooki was also photographed waving her collar in the air and laughing it up with her castmates.
Bauer-Griffin
While promoting his film Jonah Hex in 2010, Josh Brolin was spotted leaving the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills with a neck brace. Though the Oscar-nominated actor offered no explanation for the collar, the injury was understandable given his character's hyperviolent career as a bounty hunter. As for the silence, it could have just been preparation for Brolin's next role—in True Grit.
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While filming an episode of Law & Order: SVU in 2009, guest star Rosie Perez was shaken so roughly in one scene that she required hospitalization. "I got my neck cut ... and I got my pelvis bone cracked open and they [surgeons] scraped bone marrow out and put it into my neck," the actress told Entertainment Tonight after being released. "It's gonna heal and everything is gonna be OK." But many months later, Perez appeared at the GLAAD awards still wearing a neck brace. And in May, the show that claims to be ripped from the headlines, made one of its own: Perez sued the producers over her injury.
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Having once bitten the head off a bat, Ozzy Osbourne knows a little something about neck pain. But despite a career making head-banging music, the Prince of Darkness hadn't injured himself onstage when he required an orthopedic collar in 2003. Rather, he was bike riding on his English country estate. Osbourne broke his clavicle, six ribs, and a neck vertebra in the accident, but a few months later, he and his wife, Sharon, still walked the red carpet at the 2004 Grammy Awards.
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The most infamous episode in comedian Andy Kaufman's professional wrestling career involved a feud with Jerry "The King" Lawler. In the early 1980s, the outrageous Taxi star (who wrestled women and declared himself the Inter-Gender Champion) got into a fight with Lawler, who placed him in a piledriver and broke his neck. For the next few months, Kaufman appeared in public wearing a neck brace, until the two met on a surreal 1982 episode of Late Night With David Letterman in which Lawler smacked Kaufman across the face, knocking him out of his chair. While it was revealed a decade later that the two men were faking their hatred, a clearly uncomfortable Letterman was not in on the act.
Though his sister has threatened to wring his neck many times over the years, Donny Osmond injured it for real in 2003, while body surfing in Hawaii. But being a trouper, Osmond appeared at a Hollywood Walk of Fame induction celebrating his musical family shortly after the accident. True to form, Marie joked about Donny's condition during the ceremony.
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The first commoner to marry into the Japanese Imperial family, Empress Michiko has shown she's one tough royal over the years. In 2003, she and Emperor Akihito were in a car accident, two years later she made an appearance at the World Exposition in Japan wearing a neck brace, and in 2009, the 74-year-old empress tore a ligament in her knee while playing tennis.
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In 2003, designer Marc Jacobs took the credo "beauty before comfort" to a whole new level. While attending a party to celebrate his fall 2004 collection, Jacobs cut quite the figure with his long hair, glasses, neck brace, and sweaty blue shirt. Writing about Jacobs's Shvitz Chic in the New York Observer, Simon Doonan solved one style mystery: "Re Marc's neck brace: a keeping-it-real accessory? Rough trade? A barroom brawl? A kooky style statement? 'A pinched nerve,' said a spokesman."
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Were it not for a tragic car accident in 1969, Ted Kennedy might very well have followed his brother into the White House. But on the night of July 18, the 37-year-old Massachusetts senator drove his car off a bridge on Martha's Vineyard's Chappaquiddick Island, killing one of his passengers, Mary Jo Kopechne. Four days later, Kennedy appeared at Kopechne's funeral, wearing a neck brace. And several days after that, he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident for which he was given a suspended sentence of two months in jail.
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Willow Smith
Willow Smith may look like she's having fun when she
whips her hair back and forth in that video but Ellen DeGeneres wanted to make sure the 10-year-old singer was prepared if it all went horribly wrong. On a November 2010 episode of her talk show, DeGeneres presented Smith with a customized (and bedazzled) gift: "Because you have such great style, I want to make sure if you do ever hurt your head, you will be in style," DeGeneres said. "You can wear a neck brace."
