The secret birth defect that made Richard Simmons a superstar — and a recluse

nypost.com:

referred to himself as a “court jester” — suddenly vanished from the spotlight — and he hasn’t made a public appearance since.

Despite wild rumors that Simmons was being held hostage by his housekeeper and that he was undergoing gender reassignment surgery to live as a woman named “Fiona”, the real reason behind Simmons disappearance has remained a mystery — until now.

The new documentary “TMZ Investigates: What Really Happened to Richard Simmons,” which is streaming now on FOX and Hulu, claims the entertainer has been holed up in his Hollywood Hills home due to a painful ailment that he has battled with since birth — and has kept secret from his adoring public. “Something that happened to him at birth is directly connected to his disappearance — a birth defect that significantly affected one of his legs,” TMZ managing editor Fabian Garcia declared in the doc. “He was born without a full set of bones in his foot and it causes physical and emotional problems.”“Richard found comfort in food and he gained a lot of weight,” doc producer Charles Latibeaudiere further revealed. “And that put a lot of stress on his knees.”Now, some claim it was this early but enduring damage that spearheaded his eventual rise to pop culture legend — and his later downfall into a world of loneliness and despair.

Simmons — born on July 12, 1948 — was raised in New Orleans, a legendary culinary destination about which he claimed “lard was a food group and dessert was mandatory.”The workout king claimed he “came out of his mother’s womb with a fork” in his 1999 memoir “Still Hungry After All These Years: My Story.““I could recognize a package of bacon at 20 feet,” he recalled. “The strips of bacon looked so weak, so flimsy, so sad, until they hit.