Chad Michael Murray recently opened up about a serious health scare that inadvertently paved his way into the acting world.
Appearing on the Great Company with Jamie Laing podcast, the Freakier Friday actor recalled being hospitalized at the age of 15 as a result of twisted intestines, which led to life-threatening complications.
“I was hospitalized for two and a half months. It was a lot. We had surgery. I had internal bleeding, I lost 50% of my blood. I was on my deathbed,” Murray detailed, adding that he was “in and out of consciousness” during the hospital stay.
“I just remember seeing my father, the weakest I’d ever seen him, and a priest at the end of my bed, and they’re talking about last rites and all that stuff, and [the nurse, Sandy] gave me a blood transfusion to save my life,” Murray said. ”It saved my life.”
The One Tree Hill and Gilmore Girls alum also recalled another nurse, Alana, whose connections as a working model got him a foot in the door in the entertainment industry.
“Alana says to me, ‘Oh gosh, you should model,’” he said. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to model. I want to be an actor. Like, I love film and television. I want to give this gift to other people.’ And she’s like, ‘Well, you can segue from modeling into acting. Look, when you get out, I’m hooking you up with this modeling company I know.’ And she meant it.”
Murray continued, “And so I got out. I went from, like, 180 to 118 pounds. I was a skeleton when I got out, it was the scariest thing ever. I remember looking in the mirror the first time going, ‘Who is that?’ Like, I cried. I couldn’t believe that I was looking back at that guy.”
The actor recalled that the traumatic experience led him to begin a “relationship with God” and grow closer to his father. Once recovered, he said the modeling company eventually paid his way to a convention in Orlando, where a chance acting competition jumpstarted his move to Los Angeles and acquiring an agent.
Murray can currently be seen in Freakier Friday, the sequel to the 2003 body-swap comedy with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, which debuted in theaters Aug. 8.
Watch the full interview below:
