Celebrities are known for living the extravagant lifestyle, but some of them have been accused of taking things a step too far when it comes to matters of the flesh. Removing ribs? Assaulting gerbils? Cryogenically freezing the body? Is this Hollywood, or “Tales from the Crypt”? Luckily we’ve got the 411 on 10 celebrity urban legends and the details on whether they’re false, or…ew…true.  

Jamie Lee Curtis was Born a Man – Undetermined

Man, oh man, this is one whopper of a rumor. Word on the scene is that America’s Scream Queen may not be a queen at all. Although she’s known for her amazing rack, some say Jamie Lee Curtis was born a hermaphrodite, having allegedly been born with two X chromosomes and one Y. According to the rumor, the actress is physically all woman, but can’t have kids. But despite her stripping scene in “True Lies” some people still have doubts because of her somewhat masculine facial features. According to Nerve, Curtis has two kids who are adopted and she’s never discussed her “genital status.”

Marilyn Manson Removed a Rib – False

Beautiful people? We’re not so sure about that. This dark singer has been at the forefront of too many rumors to count. Perhaps the most notorious rumor is that Marilyn Manson had a rib removed to perform oral sex on himself, Ron Jeremy-style. Try not to throw up just yet—it’s just a rumor (phew). Anecdotage reported Manson saying, "People say that I removed my two bottom ribs so that I could perform oral sex on myself, but that's untrue," he explained. "The operation was far too expensive." Hey, at least he has a sense of humor about it…or is he serious?

I guess some junkies will shove anything up their noses! Rumor has it that Keith Richards snorted his dad’s ashes like it was a snowy pile of cocaine. After much back and forth on the validity of it, Richards reports that it’s indeed true! Apparently he denied that he snorted it with cocaine, telling The Guardian, “The cocaine bit was rubbish. I said I chopped him up like cocaine, not with.” Keith later confirmed in an interview on NME.com that the rest of the story was 100% straight up legit. “I pulled the lid off (my father's urn) and out comes a bit of dad on the dining room table,” he recounted. “I'm going, I can't use the brush and dustpan for this. What I found out is that ingesting your ancestors is a very respectable way of ...y'know, he went down a treat.”  

Jennifer Lopez may be a diva, but this singer/actress likes to protect her assets, if you know what we mean. J.Lo allegedly insured her famous rear end for $1 billion! Now that’s an impressive behind. As amazing as her booty may be, though, the rumor is false. "I don't know where they got it from,” Jennifer said. “When I heard the story I thought it was very funny.” Hey, as she says, love don’t cost a thing—and apparently her butt doesn’t either.

As they said in “Scream,” you can only hear that Richard Gere gerbil story enough times before you start to believe it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for the gerbil), it’s false. According to About.com, the rumor goes like this: “Richard Gere was admitted into the emergency room of a Los Angeles hospital with a foreign object lodged in his rectum. Some say Gere was alone when he arrived, others say he was accompanied by a friend (e.g., former love interest Cindy Crawford). In any case, an X-ray was taken and it was determined that the foreign object was a gerbil (either alive or dead, depending on who tells the story). Mr. Gere was rushed to surgery, where it took an entire team of doctors to extract the animal from his behind. When the gerbilectomy was done the medical team was sworn to secrecy — unsuccessfully, we must conclude — and Gere went on his merry way, suffering no permanent harm other than to his reputation. And while Gere himself has never confirmed nor denied it — nor, indeed, spoken of it directly at all — neither has any credible witness come forward in the twenty-odd years this story has been in circulation offering firsthand testimony to back it up.” One theory claims that Sylvester Stallone made up the rumor after the two had a fight. Must have been some fight.

This is one chilly rumor. Could the creator of Mickey Mouse really be cryogenically frozen? Yeah, we didn't think so. Upon Walt Disney's death from lung cancer, some die-hard fans believed he was frozen until they could find a cure for his ailment (uh, death?). According to FindaDeath.com, Disney is rumored to still be technically alive, though terminally ill and in a frozen state. That, however, is about as real as Mickey Mouse. Disney was actually cremated instead and his ashes were interred in a vault at Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Did we really have to write "false"? Sure, Bill Gates may rule the tech world, but he's far from sending us all into eternal hell fire. At best, Gates is either an evil genius (which is as close to the devil as he's getting) looking for a laugh or tech nerds have way too much time on their hands. We think the latter applies. Ego Mania sheds some light on how the devilish rumor got started: "Do you know that Bill Gates' REAL name is William Henry Gates III? Nowadays, he is known as Bill Gates (III) where "III" means the order of third (3rd). So, what's so eerie about this name? OK, if you take all the letters in Bill Gates III and then convert it in ASCII code (American Standard Code For Information Interchange) and then ADD up all the numbers...you will get 666, which is the number of the beast!!! Coincidence? Maybe, but take WINDOWS 95 and do the SAME procedure and you will get 666 too! And the same goes for MS-DOS 6.31! Are you sure this is not a coincidence?" Mmmm, we're pretty sure. Somehow we doubt that the devil would spend his time on earth hanging out with computer nerds and doling out millions to charities.  

Apparently Jackie wasn't the only person in his family to fly over the cuckoo's nest. Just like some backwoods hillbilly story, Jack Nicholson's sister is actually his mother. Holy Jerry Springer! Let Life In reports the whole torrid story: "When Jack was 37, in 1974, he found out something that changed his life - the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother. Jack's "sister" June was 17 and a dancer and showgirl with the famous Earl Carroll Dancers. She had an affair with a 27-year-old man and got pregnant. The man was not yet divorced from his first wife so he couldn't marry her. (However, he paid off some officials, committed bigamy and married her anyway, thereby saving her from what was at that time, shame and humiliation). June's mother, Ethel, was understandably upset and took matters into her own hands. June was sent to her cousins in New York where she would carry and give birth. She then returned to Neptune, New Jersey where they lived and it was agreed that Ethel, Jack's grandmother, would raise the child as her own. No one would know. So Jack was raised by his grandmother, thinking she was his mother and that his actual mother was his older sister. Whoever knew, kept the secret. The truth hit him hard. By the time Jack found out, both his mother and grandmother had died." And you thought your family had issues.

In a list of movie stars we'd like to see in a porno, Barbra Streisand comes in at about, oh, #5,080. But according to the gossip mill, Babs may have beaten us to the punch, as she's rumored to have starred in a porno early in her career. Guess the mirror really does have two faces. Whispers Celebrity Rumors, "Apparently the flick is an original in 8mm, and Miss Streisand's face is clearly recognizable in several scenes. It features her having "romantic" sex with a male partner on a sofa." King Web reports that a very verklempt Babs tried to track down the porno in question to see what the fuss was about. The final verdict? "The actress in the film in question bares a striking resemblance to Barbra -- except in the hands," the site says. "Streisand has gleefully pointed out that the fingers of the hands that grab the leading actor's manhood are short and stubby. As we all know, Streisand's fingers are very long and very bony." Yes, and her hands are like buttah.

Tupac Shakur's former label maybe be called Death Row, but is this presumably deceased rapper still alive and kicking? Many fans speculate that Tupac's death was a conspiracy and that he's still breathing to this day.  According to Icubed.com, there are many theories as to why he's not in rapper heaven. For example: One week after Tupac's death over 1,000 people called the cops in Haiti and said that they saw Tupac there; Tupac died on Friday the 13^th; the white Cadillac containing the gunmen passed an entourage of Tupac's boys, many of them bodyguards, and no one chased them and there are no witnesses; Tupac changed his artist name to Makaveli, an Italian war strategist who thought about faking his own death to fool his enemies; and many more. Check out this complete list for more eerie theories.