12 Celebrities With Scars and How They Got Them

Find out how these stars got their scars…

Kylie Jenner was left with a large scar on one of her legs after an accident that occurred when she was playing with her sister Kendall as a little girl. The makeup mogul has shared the story behind her scar, but notes that she loves it and doesn’t mind showing it off. 

“When I was about five, my sister and I were playing hide and seek, and I hid inside this really tall, enclosed gate,” she once shared on an Instagram story. “After a while, when my sister didn’t find me, I had to climb up on this sharp pole sticking out from the gate. I slipped, and the pole went into my leg. I tried pulling away to get the pole out, but it just tore through my whole leg.”

Many fans know that Selena Gomez underwent a kidney transplant, but often don’t realize it left her with a scar on both her abdomen and her inner thigh. While Selena admits it was initially something she wanted to hide, she says she’s now proud to show it off and share what she’s been through. 

“When I got my kidney transplant, I remember it being very difficult at first showing my scar,” she wrote on Instagram. “I didn’t want it to be in photos, so I wore things that would cover it up. Now, more than ever, I feel confident in who I am and what I went through… and I’m proud of that.” 

When Tina Fey was a little girl, she was attacked by a stranger who slashed her face. While she survived the scary ordeal, it left her with a large scar on her face that stretches from her lip to her cheek. Looking back on her childhood, she says the scar actually made her quite popular among her peers.

“During the spring semester of kindergarten, I was slashed in the face by a stranger in the alley behind my house,” she wrote in her book, Bossypants. “My scar was a miniature form of celebrity. Kids knew who I was because of it. Lots of people liked to claim they were there when it happened. ‘I was there. I saw it. Crazy Mike did it!’ Adults were kind to me because of it…I was made to feel special. What should have shut me down and made me feel ‘less than’ ended up giving me an inflated sense of self.”

Kaley Cuoco has a large scar on her leg that she was left with after a serious equestrian accident. Back in 2010, Kaley was riding her horse when the animal got spooked and threw her off. The horse ended up stepping on her leg, causing a “horrible, horrible, horrible break” during which a bone penetrated through the skin of her lower leg. She was rushed into surgery, but was told she might lose her leg. Thankfully, she made a full recovery but was left with some scars. 

“I’ve got some good scars,” she said on the SmartLess podcast. “It makes you feel like a badass.”

Long before Harrison Ford was famous, he was in a serious car accident that left him with a noticeable scar on his chin. He says he was on the way to work at a department store and realized he forgot to put on his seatbelt. While attempting to grab it, he veered off the road, “hit a high curb, and the car went up on two wheels and smashed into a telephone pole.”

“I hit the steering wheel, I think. I crawled out of the car. I remember very vividly that although my car was in the middle of the road, no one would stop. They would just creep around me at five miles an hour and keep on going. I was just standing in the road, bleeding quite profusely. And it pissed me off so much that no one would stop that I refused to gesture to ask them. So I just stood there until somebody finally stopped, took me to the hospital,” he told Vanity Fair, adding of the surgeon, “Not a very good job.”

In 2018, Carrie Underwood tripped outside her home, breaking her wrist and injuring her face. She was rushed to the hospital and required almost 50 stitches. Following the accident, Carrie remained off social media while her injuries healed. She now has a scar underneath her nose.

“It’s crazy how a freak random accident can change your life. In addition to breaking my wrist, I somehow managed to injure my face as well. I’ll spare you the gruesome details, but when I came out of surgery the night of my fall, the doctor told [my husband] Mike that he had put between 40 and 50 stitches in,” she shared at the time.

Padma Lakshmi has a noticeable scar on her arm from a serious car accident when she was a teenager. Padma and her parents were heading home together when they were rear-ended by a massive tractor-trailer, which caused their car to go off the road and down an embankment. They were all injured, including Padma, who sustained serious injury to her arm. While she admits the scar used to make her self-conscious, she now shares it proudly. 

“I’m proud of my scars because they mean that I’ve had a life, an interesting one….I’m happy to have a visual reminder every day of how precious life is,” she told SELF in 2016.

Jason Momoa’s signature slash through his eyebrow is actually the result of a serious injury. Back in 2008, he was involved in a bar fight during which he was struck in the face with a broken beer glass. The gash required over 100 stitches and reconstructive surgery. Reflecting on the incident, Jason says he’s glad to have the scar because it helped him shed his “pretty boy” image.

“I got called ‘pretty boy’ my whole life,” he told the New York Post. “If anything, it’s like, ‘Good. It’s not my thing now.’”

Sharon Stone had a scary incident as a young teenager that left her with a scar on her neck. Looking back in her book, The Beauty of Living Twice, Sharon says she was trying to break a wild horse when it suddenly took off and ran straight for a clothes line on her family’s property. She ended up riding right into the wire, slicing her neck and then getting dragged around by the horse until her mom rescued her. 

“My neck was hanging open, wet and ripped from one ear to the other. There was plasma rolling down the front of my shirt. It was a gigantic fucked-up mess of drastic proportions,” she wrote. “[The doctor] just looked at fourteen inches of meaty, torn-up kid neck and then looked at me…My neck looked like I had a red, then pink, then white rope tied around it. That is how it healed.”

She added that after subsequent surgeries to cover it up, “It looks okay now, and most people don't seem to notice it. I don't care about it on most days, and once you survive things, over time, well…I personally feel proud of my scars.”

Seal has become synonymous with the scarring he has on his face. The marks originated from a ​​skin condition called discoid lupus erythematosus that can cause sores on the skin. Looking back, Seal says it started small but eventually got larger -- and he wasn’t able to get it treated until he was famous. 

“I remember going to see doctors, and no one knew what it was…This went on for ages that no one knew. It wasn’t until fame and fortune found me that I was able to see a top specialist who looked at me with a magnifying glass and said, ‘Young man, you have lupus,’” he shared in a PBS interview. “Oh, it shattered my confidence. But if you were to say, now at the age of almost 60, how would I change anything if I could? Not a thing.”

Prince William has had a scar over his left eyebrow since he was a teenager. He was left with the mark after he was accidentally hit with a golf club at age 13. As it’s been so many years, William says it’s definitely not as noticeable as it once was.

“I call it [my Harry Potter scar] because it glows sometimes and some people notice it -- other times they don't notice it at all,” he said in a 2009 three years old.

When Queen Latifah was just three years old, she tripped over a phone cord and hit her head on her family’s bathroom door, leaving her with a scar on her forehead. Since then, she has notably asked magazines not to photoshop it out of her images.

“It’s part of who I am, so I’d like it to be accepted as part of who I am,” she told Variety. “There are a lot of people reading those magazines not unlike myself, who have some sort of scar too. I don’t think we should try to make everything look perfect.”