All for an extra limb: Vanity Fair’s curious cover

Los Angeles, US - The latest cover of prestigious US magazine Vanity Fair features an annual photograph of Hollywood’s elite - with a twist. Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman and other stars are grouped for the magazine’s ‘Hollywood Issue’ in a photo lavishly retouched - but forgetting, it seems, to erase an extra leg.

‘Well...I guess everybody knows now...I have 3 legs’, Witherspoon joked on Twitter. ‘I hope you can still accept me for who I am.’ After Witherspoon’s tweet, Oprah raised her hand to comment on another picture taken for the issue by acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz. ‘I accept your 3d leg. As I know you accept my 3d hand’, Winfrey joked. She was referring to a separate photo from the shoot, one in which Oprah indeed seems to have three hands: One at her waist, one around Witherspoon, and a third resting on her own leg. That photo has now been removed from Vanity Fair’s website.

The photographs caused amusement on the Internet, and Vanity Fair played along. ‘While we would have loved the exclusive on @RWitherspoon’s three legs, unfortunately it’s just the lining of her dress’, the magazine tweeted.

As for Oprah - a producer, presenter and actress - ‘How can we expect her to juggle it all with just two hands?’ Vanity Fair joked, noting that the error was being corrected.