Kate Mulgrew, formerly known as Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager and currently playing Red on Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, often plays strong, no-nonsense women.
So it’s not a shock, then, that she had a fairly rough childhood, at least in the beginning.
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Mulgrew revealed to U.K. outlet ITV that she was born with a full set of teeth, a condition called natal teeth, which only occurs in roughly 1:2,000 or 1:3,000 births in Canada, according to experts at the University of Calgary.
“They’re actually sort of … they’re pearlescent, they’re blue,” Mulgrew said. “And they’re very dangerous because the baby can swallow them.”
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(Eventually, Mulgrew’s natal teeth were removed.)
But that’s not all she endured. She suffered from congenital insensitivity to pain, so her parents kept her in a cage for part of her youth.
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“They built me a little cage, because I had no sense of pain until I was four years old,” she said. “So I was born with teeth and had no sense of pain. Shakespeare would have had a field day. It’s a witch! That’s what a witch is.”
Mulgrew released her memoir earlier this year, appropriately titled Born With Teeth. She recounts these tales, and more, about her rather unorthodox childhood.
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