Top 5 Myths about Famous Actors

“Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood” was one of the most wholesome shows to ever grace our TV sets, so obviously the kind people of the internet had to do their due diligence to dig up dirt on its kindly host. The rumor goes that Fred McFeely Rogers was a Navy SEAL who fought in Vietnam and had 150 “kills” under his belt. In fact however, Mr Rogers never even served in the military, let alone as a sniper. Rogers graduated from Rollins College in Florida with a degree in music in 1951 and immediately began his career in broadcast television, leaving very little time in his life or room on his resume for fighting in ‘Nam.

In 1928, Daniel Edwards, the owner of Fremont Canning Company, was looking for an image to represent the brand’s new line of baby food. He and his cousin Kureem Edwards held a contest, asking people to submit artwork with the chance of becoming the face of the company. The resulting image is iconic, and has continued to be used by Gerber for generations. For years, rumors circulated that the baby seen on the label was a famous actor like Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor. One of the more wild legends said it was the face of Brooke Shields, who was born in 1965, decades after the contest was held. The real model was not an actress at all, but was instead Ann Turner Cook, who avoided the public eye until her golden years and ultimately became a mystery author and teacher.

The inception of this myth is a mystery, and it seems surprising that it could flourish considering all of the pictures that exist of Monroe. This fact is often attributed when bemoaning current beauty standards and used to cite how curvier women used to be considered the height of attractiveness. In fact though, by modern sizing standards – which vary greatly depending on the shop and country – Marilyn Monroe would be nowhere near the size 12 or 16 that she is often referenced as wearing. In the 1980s, vanity sizing took over and numbers on garments shrank while the average American woman grew. This means that what while Marilyn may have been a size 12 in the 1950s, she would wear somewhere between a size 6 or 8 US today.

She was indeed born this way. In 2009, at the height of Gaga mania, rumors began to circle that the newly famous pop star had actually been born male – or was a hermaphrodite. There are no actual facts or evidence behind this myth, which was largely based on a photo of Gaga that people said made it look like she had a bulge where a lady shouldn’t. Stefani Germanotta – Gaga to you and I – has denied this speculation, however, though she says the rumor no longer bothers her. She went on to address it in her video for “Telephone”. Given Gaga's regular themes of sexuality and androgyny in her work, one can understand why people were confused and how this idea caught on – even if it was completely baseless and bogus.

This is one of the most famous Hollywood myths, but also the most ridiculous. Arising in the mid-1980s, the legend has it that Richard Gere was forced to make a trip to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to have a rodent removed from his rectum. Not only is there no evidence that this happened to Gere, there is actually no proof that this practice even exists at all. While it is true that doctors and other hospital staff have reportedly removed many foreign objects from patents’ bodies that were put there for sexual pleasure, gerbils are not one of them. While the idea of “gerbilling” may have been created by homophobes as an example to illustrate the depravity of gay men, it's unknown exactly what led to this idea being falsely attached to Richard Gere.