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.”
(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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