“How quickly we grow accustomed to wonders,” wrote the famed movie critic Roger Ebert. “We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.”
In Hollywood, these “wonders” tend to be special effects, illusions on the silver screen. But for five of Hollywood’s elite, unexpected wonders burst through the veneer of everyday life and provided a very real glimpse of something even more powerful than Harvey Weinstein…
Today, Sir Anthony Hopkins is one of the world’s most recognizable and accomplished actors, but in 1972, at age 35, he was in the midst of a struggle with depression and alcoholism. Until he discovered a lost book on the London Underground that seemed meant for him to find…
Actress Diane Lane, most recently the voice of the mom in Pixar’s Inside Out, lost her father in 2002, a few months before she was scheduled to be interviewed on one of his favorite programs, the Charlie Rose show. On her way to the studio, a run in with a New York City taxi cab sent her a comforting message…
He might play an indestructible superhero, but actor Mark Ruffalo, the Hulk in this year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, almost didn’t live past his first big role. In 2001, he had a vivid dream that something was growing inside his head, slowly killing him. A dream that was more real than he could have known…
Forty years ago, Richard Dreyfus battled a hungry shark in Jaws, but in real life, he was fighting more dangerous threats—drugs and alcohol. After wrapping his Mercedes around a palm tree and being arrested for cocaine possession, he began to have visions of a girl, about eight years old, in a pink-and-white dress and horn-rimmed glasses. He didn’t discover who she was until years later…
Bennifer 2.0 is no more, but Ben Affleck might be inspired by the love story of his pal Matt Damon. Instantly recognizable after his Academy Award for Good Will Hunting, Matt took a part in the Farrelly Brothers gross-out comedy Stuck on You. Production was unexpectedly moved to Miami, where after a miserable day on set, Matt found himself being heckled at a nightclub. He ducked behind the bar to escape, and found true love instead…
Every issue of Mysterious Ways shares a true story of a celebrity who experienced an “inexplicable,” wondrous, unexpected, twist of fate. Know a good tale we haven’t told yet? Send it to us, and you’ll receive a finder’s fee upon publication in the magazine!
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