Rose Siggins: Activist who overcame severe disability to become an actress on American television

Rose Siggins (EPA)

Rose Siggins was an American actress and disabilities activist best known for her portrayal of Legless Suzi on American Horror Story: Freak Show. She was born was born with sacral agenesis, a congenital spinal disorder, and because of this, she recalled, “my legs were severely deformed, with the feet pointing in opposite directions.” Her parents decided to have her legs amputated.

Siggins believed that she was the only person with sacral agenesis to have carried and given birth to a baby who was not disabled. In 2014 she joined Freak Show, the fourth of the anthology series American Horror Story, which follows the fortunes of an American freak show in the 1950s. She had previously appeared in episodes of Ripley's Believe It or Not and Extraordinary People, as well as a 2005 documentary about her life, The Woman with Half a Body.

After her legs were amputated, Siggins learned to walk on her hands, finding the prosthetic legs with which she was fitted too painful, and she eventually began using a skateboard to get around. She qualified as a mechanic, and drove a specially adapted car, then in 1997 met Dave Siggins, who worked at the car parts shop she used. They married and had two children. In 2012 she said of her daughter, “Shelby loves that I'm so short, because I'm always on her level. She says she loves having the world's shortest mum!”

Siggins died of complications from surgery to remove kidney stones. The producers of American Horror Story said in tribute, “She was a kind person, a loving mother and a very fine actress.”

Rose Marie Homan, actress: born Pueblo, Colorado 8 December 1972; married Dave Siggins (one daughter, one son); died Denver, Colorado 12 December 2015.