A musician whose horrific accident became "a huge gift," a former model whose amputation
forced her to overhaul her entire diet, and an athlete who overcame a deadly infection
to win big at the Paralympics.
You might be surprised to learn which celebs have had amputations.
Even if you're a fan of the Grateful Dead, you might not know that the late Jerry Garcia
was missing a part of his finger.
He lost that digit when he was just a child, but that didn't stop him from being a part
of one of the most beloved rock bands of all time.
When Garcia was just five years old, the middle finger on his right hand fell victim to a
wood chopping accident with his brother.
But as he insisted during a 1971 interview,
"It never bothers me, never ever [...] I’ve often wondered why nobody’s ever asked me
about it before."
Garcia shared the story with Rolling Stone in 1991, as he recounted,
"For me, the traumatic part of it was after the doctor amputated it, I had this big cast
and bandages on it.
And they gradually got smaller and smaller, until I was down to like one bandage.
And I thought for sure my finger was under there [...] And that was the worst part when
the bandage came off.
'Oh my God, my finger is gone.'
But after that, it was okay, because as a kid, if you have a few little things that
make you different, it's a good score.'"
"I've got it right here in this box.
Would you like to take a look at it?"
"I think we all would."
"Yeah."
"Get a shot of that!
There it is."
The late Waylon Jennings is best remembered as one of the founders of the Outlaw Movement
in country music.
In the 1970s, he and fellow country icon Willie Nelson created outlaw country as a rebellion
against the pop-influenced country music that was popular at the time.
Jennings and Nelson didn't let producers or record companies dictate their musical stylings,
as they maintained creative control of their own sound.
In his autobiography, Jennings wrote,
"For us, 'outlaw' meant standing up for your rights, your own way of doing things.
It felt like a different music, and outlaw was as good a description as any."
In 1974, Jennings reached number one for the very first time with "This Time," which would
be followed up with "I'm a Ramblin' Man."
Later that decade, he teamed up with Nelson on the album Waylon & Willie, and he would
continue to make music well into the 80s.
Jennings was eventually diagnosed with diabetes, and in December 2001 he had to have his left
foot amputated because of an infection.
He died in February of the following year at the age of 64 in his home in Arizona.
Jim Byrnes didn't let the loss of both his legs stop him from pursuing his dreams.
The actor and blues singer suffered a devastating accident in 1972 when a car slammed into him
as he was trying to push a pickup truck off the highway during a stormy night.
The crash resulted in both of his legs having to be amputated.
As he recounted to People magazine in 1990,
"I remember being pulled out from under the truck, and my right leg was torn off.
It was like watching a Sam Peckinpah movie."
When a doctor told him that both of his legs were gone, Byrnes responded,
"Is this guy kidding me?
This can't be."
Instead of living the rest of his life in a wheelchair, Byrnes learned how to use prosthetics.
After having difficulties landing acting gigs, he finally found his calling 15 years after
his accident when he starred in the CBS series Wiseguy from 1987 through 1990.
In addition to acting, Byrnes is also a talented blues musician with nine records under his
belt.
For Byrnes, he simply wasn't going to live the rest of his life sulking after losing
his limbs.
As he revealed to the Associated Press in 1987,
"I told myself, there's absolutely nothing I can do about this, no matter how many tears
I cry, it is not going to change the fact that I lost my legs, so let's get on with
it."
You might know Dean Winters for his appearances in hit TV shows like Oz and 30 Rock, or as
the personification of Mayhem in a series of Allstate Insurance commercials.
But you probably don't know that he's had several amputations.
In June 2009, he lost two toes and half of his thumb after he contracted a bacterial
infection that caused him to go into cardiac arrest for more than two minutes.
Paramedics were able to revive him, but he still contracted gangrene, which resulted
in the multiple amputations.
He talked about the lingering effects of that experience in 2021 when he told Page Six,
"I haven’t taken a step since 2009 without being in pain.
I've got neuropathy on, you know, on a whole different level where I can't feel my hands
and my feet.
But if I stepped on a pebble, it's like I go through the roof [...] Nothing you can
do about it.
I've been sucking it up because, you know, the alternative is not a place where I want
to be."
Despite the constant pain, Winters' acting career has continued apace.
In June 2021, Deadline reported that he would be starring in Peacock's upcoming drama series
Joe Exotic, which follows the criminal case of the infamous titular big cat zookeeper.
Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi is undoubtedly one of heavy metal's most influential guitarists
of all time.
But before he became a rock god, he suffered a horrible industrial accident that almost
led to him giving up the guitar.
He recalled the grisly details during a 2017 conversation at the Musicians Institute, when
he shared,
"I'd be on the line and they'd pass stuff down to me and I'd weld it, and then it'd
go on to somewhere else.
And the one day, the person that would be sending me the thing to weld never turned
up, so they put me on this giant huge press, a massive guillotine-type press [...] Bang!
It came down.
It just took the ends off [my fingers]."
After the accident, Iommi was given an EP by Django Reinhardt, a jazz guitarist who
had lost partial mobility in two fingers due to a fire.
Hearing Reinhardt play was a turning point for Iommi.
As he recalled,
"It really sort of inspired me more to overcome what had happened."
Iommi created tips for his fingers to be able to play his guitar, and his unique sound resulted
in what we know now as heavy metal.
"In hindsight, it created something.
It made me invent a new sound and a different style of playing and a different sort of music."
The late actor-slash-socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor's leg was amputated in early 2011, but she didn't
even know that the procedure had taken place for a while.
Her husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt told the New York Post that she learned about the
amputation six months later.
But at her memorial service in 2016, he said that she was actually made aware of it years
later.
Gabor was 93 years old when she needed to get her right leg amputated after it was infected
with gangrene.
While the operation was a success, her husband told parishioners at a Beverly Hills church
that she believed that she was just going in for an X-ray and it wasn't until three
years later that she noticed that her leg wasn't there.
As he recounted,
"All of a sudden she looked down and she said, 'There's a leg missing.'
I said, 'No, your leg is here, right in front of you.
I'm your leg.
You don't need a leg.'"
Anhalt believed that it was best to keep her amputation a secret.
At the time of her operation, he said,
"Eventually, she will feel it, and then she will ask me and at that moment I don't even
want to think about it."
As it turned out, Anhalt actually had a few years to think about what he would say to
his wife before she finally realized her leg was gone.
Gabor passed away in 2016 at the age of 99.
Known as "The First Lady of Song," jazz great Ella Fitzgerald captivated audiences with
her unique voice for nearly 60 years.
She recorded over 200 albums over the course of her career, although her health began to
deteriorate by the 1980s.
She underwent heart surgery in 1986, and she was also diagnosed with diabetes, which caused
her eyesight to worsen.
Despite all that, Fitzgerald continued to perform, including at New York City's Carnegie
Hall in 1991.
Unfortunately, because of her diabetes, she had both of her legs amputated below the knee
in 1994.
That marked the end of her performing days, and she spent the rest of her life in her
Beverly Hills home until she died at the age of 79 on June 15, 1996.
Rock history isn't without its wild and crazy moments, and Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen
has one of the most intense tales.
Allen was involved in a car crash in 1984 that resulted in him losing his left arm,
but that didn't lead to him or his bandmates giving up on his career.
He recounted the accident to ABC News, as he revealed that the seat belt came undone
and got caught up in his arm as he went out of the car.
Being without an arm sounds absolutely devastating for the drummer of a world-famous rock band,
but Allen relearned how to play with just his right arm and his feet.
Once he recovered, Def Leppard would go on to release their best-selling record to date,
1987's Hysteria.
Looking back at that nightmarish day, he told ABC News,
"In many ways, I think it enabled me to grow in so many ways.
It became a blessing, a responsibility, a responsibility to other people.
To myself.
And I think that has become a huge gift."
Allen has ultimately embraced the silver lining.
As he put it on The Howard Stern Show in 2019,
"I stopped comparing myself to how I used to play, and I stopped comparing myself to
others and I went, 'What I do is really unique.
Go with that.'"
Before she became famous for marrying Paul McCartney, Heather Mills had already survived
a horrific accident.
In 1993, she was struck by a police motorcycle and had to have her left leg amputated below
the knee.
She was carefully crossing the street when the motorcycle drove past.
Not only did she lose her leg, her pelvis was also crushed and her lung was punctured.
Mills has revealed that she would've also needed to have an above-the-knee amputation
if it weren't for a change in diet.
As she told Bang Showbiz in 2015,
"I didn't really have an understanding of healthy food when I went vegan, I did it to
stop my leg from being chopped off more, I didn't want to lose my knee.
My friend told me that she cured herself of breast cancer by going completely vegan, and
I went, 'Vegan, smegan, what on earth?
I can't just give up meat.'
But she dragged me off to America and basically saved my knee.'"
Since losing her leg, Mills has supported several charities that focus on people with
disabilities and even worked with The London Prosthetic Center to create a prosthetic ski
leg that helped her become the "fastest disabled woman on the planet" when she became a speed
skier.
"Just for a complete change and to disappear in the mountains and change my life."
Amy Purdy was 19 years old when she contracted meningitis that resulted in the loss of both
her legs below the knee, plus the loss of both of her kidneys and her spleen.
Before she contracted the illness, she'd discovered a love for snowboarding.
After the amputation, she didn't give up on the sport, and she even went on to build her
own prosthetic leg.
As she revealed to Sports Illustrated in 2017,
"Snowboarding is what got me through my toughest days because I was so passionate about it
that I didn't even think about walking again, I just thought about snowboarding.
I set my goals high; I wanted to snowboard again.
I didn't know I was going to compete again, but I knew that I wanted to be out there on
the snow with my friends."
"I think I had just hit a point where I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Purdy would go on to become a three-time Paralympic medalist for Team USA, winning one silver
and two bronze.
In addition to all that, she appeared on Season 18 of Dancing With the Stars and Season 21
of The Amazing Race.
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