The 2010 Dancing with the Stars champ suffered chronic pain for years after a neck injury from a 1987 car accident. Managing the pain mainly with "Advil and ice packs," she focused her energy not on her career, but on becoming a wife and mom—eventually marrying actor Clark Gregg and having daughter Stella, now 9. When she joined Dancing’s 11th season, she did it largely because she wanted to push herself after a surgery to insert a plate in her neck (to ease pain and prevent further damage) led doctors to discover cancerous tumors on her thyroid. The cancer had not spread, her thyroid was removed, and no chemotherapy or radiation was needed. "I wondered, what if I took more risks?" She danced without knowing whether she could complete her final dance—the night before the finale, she ruptured a disc in her lower back. But even her doctor, who supervised her carefully, said, "People are better off moving around than sitting around." Surgery to repair the disc has left her "pain free."