When you think of fame, you might imagine glitz and glamour, but even celebrities are just people who can find themselves in the most perilous situations. Here are ten stories of celebrities narrowly dodging death, proving that luck can be as unpredictable as a plot twist.
How These Celebrities Narrowly Escaped Death
10 Elvis Presley
In April 1936 a series of ferocious tornadoes tore across Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee, leaving a trail of destruction that would rank among the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history. The most violent of them struck Tupelo, Mississippi, where an estimated F5 twister claimed 216 lives in the Gum Pond area alone.
Among the survivors was a one‑year‑old baby named Elvis Presley, living with his family in Tupelo. The young King of Rock ’n’ Roll grew up far from those storm‑raked fields, only to become a cultural icon before his own untimely death on August 16, 1977.
9 John Lydon
Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten, missed a 1988 flight from London to New York because his wife, Nora, wasn’t finished packing when it was time to head to the airport. After a heated argument, they caught the next available flight.
The flight they had originally booked was Pan Am Flight 103, which later exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, after a bomb detonated in its cargo hold. Everyone aboard perished. When Lydon and his wife learned what could have happened, they “almost collapsed.” The experience has haunted Lydon for years, even prompting him to walk out of a reality‑show segment when producers wouldn’t tell him whether his wife’s flight had arrived safely.
8 Fats Domino
By the mid‑1950s, Fats Domino had sold millions of records and boasted 35 hits on the U.S. Top 40. After a celebrated career that culminated with the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1998, he settled in New Orleans. When Hurricane Katrina rolled in 2005, the 77‑year‑old musician chose to stay home with his ailing wife and wait out the storm.
When rescue crews finally arrived, the house was flooded and a graffiti tag read, “RIP Fats. You will be missed.” The news broke on September 1 that Fats and his family had been rescued, but they had lost everything. Their home was rebuilt the following year, and President George W. Bush later replaced the Medal of Arts that had been lost in the flood.
7 Nate Berkus
Interior‑design guru Nate Berkus, known for his regular segments on The Oprah Winfrey Show, faced a life‑changing tragedy on December 26, 2004. While vacationing at a popular beach resort in Sri Lanka, the Indian Ocean tsunami struck without warning. Nate and his partner, Fernando Bengoechea, clung to a telephone pole as the wave surged. Though Nate believed they would survive, Fernando was swept away, never to be seen again.
In 2014, Nate married Jeremiah Brent, and the couple keep Fernando’s memory alive through photos and stories, especially for their daughter, Poppy.
6 Drew Barrymore
In February 2001, Drew Barrymore and her then‑fiancé Tom Green were awakened by their dog Flossie barking furiously at their bedroom door. Investigating the commotion, they discovered their canyon‑side Beverly Hills home engulfed in flames. The couple and their dog escaped unharmed, but the fire devoured the mansion, requiring more than 50 firefighters to bring it under control.
The blaze’s cause was never definitively determined, and the couple’s marriage lasted only nine months, ending in December 2001.
5 Elizabeth Taylor And Kirk Douglas
Mike Todd, film producer and Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband, was slated to fly to New York in 1958 to accept a Friars Club award. Elizabeth begged to accompany him, but Todd insisted she stay home due to a cold. Hours before take‑off, he tried to persuade his friend Kirk Douglas to join the flight, joking that he wouldn’t let the plane crash.
Tragically, the private plane “Lucky Liz” suffered engine failure and crashed in New Mexico, killing Todd, screenwriter Art Cohn, and the pilot and copilot. Had Elizabeth or Kirk been aboard, they too would have perished. Douglas lived to 100, while Taylor passed away in 2011.
4 Michael J. Fox
It was no surprise after the success of the first Back to the Future movie that a sequel would be made. And then another one. It was during the filming of the third installment that tragedy almost stuck its star, Michael J. Fox.
He was filming a scene in which his character gets hanged. For the first few shots of the scene, Fox was standing on a box with a rope around his neck. They were filming only the top half of his body, but Fox couldn’t get his reaction to be authentic enough to his own liking. So he decided to try the scene without the help of the box. It went fine until his third try, during which a slip of the hand caused the rope to tighten around his neck, cutting off his carotid artery. He was unconscious for a good couple of seconds, hanging from the rope, before the director realized something was wrong.
Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s a year after the movie’s release.
3 Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds is a very popular actor, with most fans agreeing that he really came into his own playing the role of Deadpool. However, we very nearly didn’t have any Ryan movies at all.
At the age of 17, Ryan decided to go skydiving. During his plummet to the ground, he pulled the cord, but the parachute wouldn’t open. Panicking, he pulled again—still nothing. He remembered that the reserve chute could save his life, but in his terrified state, he couldn’t bring himself to launch it, convinced it wouldn’t work, either, and that he was falling inevitably to his death. Luckily, he got himself together and pulled the reserve chute cord. The chute opened, helping Ryan to land safely.
Shortly after this, his instructor lost his life during a dive that went wrong. Ryan never went back to skydiving.
2 Jet Li
Nate Berkus wasn’t the only celebrity caught up in the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Jet Li was vacationing in the Maldives with his family when the tidal wave hit. Recalling his fear during an interview, he remembered how quickly he had to grab his daughters and pull their nanny along, all the while running away from the giant waves.
By the time he’d moved only a couple of steps, the water was up to his waist, but he just kept running. Everything was swept away around them, with the water eventually reaching Li’s face. Fortunately, Li and his family made it back to their hotel, where they put on life jackets while bracing for even bigger waves to hit the island. Out of gratitude for life, pure empathy, and sorrow for the victims, the movie star donated more than $150,000 to the relief fund set up after the disaster.
1 George Clooney
During the filming of the 2005 movie Syriana, George Clooney hit his head after falling over during a scene in which he was tied to a chair. Afterward, he experienced terrible headaches, constant pain, and memory loss. Doctors struggled to diagnose exactly what his injuries were. Clooney couldn’t take painkillers, either, for fear of falling into addiction like many of his family members.
Only after almost a year did a neurologist identify the cause of Clooney’s incessant pain. He had torn his dura mater, the outermost meningeal layer around the brain and spinal cord, resulting in a brain injury. Looking back on the terrible experience, Clooney recalled contemplating suicide because he simply couldn’t deal with the pain. In that same year, he also lost two family members and a beloved dog.
Fortunately, a series of operations took care of the splitting headaches and other physical pain. In June 2017, George and his wife Amal became the proud parents of twins, Alexander and Ella.