A good number of Hollywood stars went through hell before entering the path of the Lord.
Sir Anthony Hopkins, for example, confessed his Christian faith in a speech to five hundred high school and university students. There are so few believers in Hollywood, where depravity is considered an overflow, which is why every actor who accepts the resulting disadvantages and knows and is able to face the countercurrents of this spiritual tsunami is worthy of respect.
us know the Oscar-winning Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter from the film The Silence of the Lambs However, the most despicable psychopath on the film charts is in reality a humble, believing Christian.
But his way of life was not always this impeccable religious life. At the beginning of his career, he struggled with serious alcohol problems and was unreliable, which was not helped by theater life:
"Everyone in the theater does this. Everyone drinks. But I was especially difficult to work with. I was almost always drunk"
- admitted the famous actor with undisguised honesty. At the age of thirty-seven, he realized that drinking puts not only himself in danger, but also those close to him. That's why he joined Alcoholics Anonymous.
“It was as if a demon had control over me. An addiction I couldn't shake. And unfortunately there are millions of people in a similar situation to me"
- she shared this difficult phase of her life with her audience.
At the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, someone asked him the question: Why doesn't he believe in God? The actor with a complicated personality became interested in God following the simplicity of this banal question, his need for alcohol gradually disappeared, and he has been sticking to God and his faith ever since.
the poignant Rite , he played an exorcist priest who was overtaken by the demon he had fought his whole life against. In an interview after the shoot, he compared atheism to a prison cell with no windows. "I couldn't live like this without God. Would you know? There are a lot of famous people on TV these days talking about how they don't believe in God and who do believe they are fools. … I would ask them how they can be so sure that God does not exist? And how could one man disprove what so many great philosophers have believed in, and for which so many have been martyred over the millennia?”
Source: vasarnap.hu
Besides him, there are many others in Babylon the Great who fled to the Lord in a similar way to him, whose conversion was caused by their sinking existence. Stars who first traveled the deepest recesses of Hell, then reached the brink of utter despair, only to be pulled back by a Hand before they fell into nothingness.
A dedicated believer gets to be among the Hollywood stars almost only in this way, because either he is not invited or he does not want to go in the first place. In this respect, Steve Carell is a rare exception, who became a star without ever dreaming of it and without having to go through hell to have faith.
This is how he confesses himself, jokingly taking stock of his missing childhood traumas, which are the basis of being an artist:
“I'm disappointingly old-fashioned, there's nothing special or funny about me. My parents are still happily married at the age of 89 and they provided me with a cloudless childhood, which was free of all the horrors that I could later use in dramatic roles."
It is typical of the strength of his faith that he had the courage to go to the radio talk show of the notorious nihilist DJ Howard Stern, who stirs up endless scandals with almost every broadcast. In this show, the DJ didn't elaborate too much, he wanted to give Carell a good taste with his usual Catholic insulting questions, and he honestly tried to answer everything as he could, sometimes confidently, sometimes expressing doubts. According to the eyewitnesses, the most surprising thing was that after a while the host started talking to Carell in a tone of respect.
Due to the constant pressure and the compulsion to conform, Hollywood stars often become complacent, and due to sudden fame or negative criticism, many actors turn to alcohol and drugs. However, there are some stars who, instead of continuous trouble, get on the front page of newspapers because of their religious faith and enviable peace of mind.
The Passion Mel Gibson made a strong mark in film history with one of the most significant Jesus films, for which he received a lot of praise from mainstream media critics. According to the actor-director himself, his faith helped him many times through the difficulties of filming. He is by no means a blameless person, he failed many times and very badly during his life, he had to struggle through a difficult period more than once, but the committed actor was able to stand up again and again, and later he always used his experiences to actively help his colleagues to break free from drug addiction .
Jim Caviezel, the Passion , is the actor who is perhaps the most open about the importance of faith, he simply refuses to appear in a film that proclaims the victory of evil.
Al Pacino, who plays the recurring negative heroes of gangster films, is also a practicing Catholic, but after his sudden break with religion in the early 1970s, he returned to the church while filming the not-so-Catholic-friendly Godfather .
Antonio Banderas, the Spanish actor and director, holds office in a fraternity in Spain, participating in the city's Holy Week parade every year. In 2011, he once stated:
“I'm Catholic, but at the age of 16 or 17, when I really started to doubt things, I said to myself: no, these many things are absolutely impossible. Then I entered the age when I needed spirituality. All I had to do was rely on the word of Jesus, which cannot be replaced by anything else, is unquestionable, this is love.”
Cuban-American actor Andy Garcia once revealed:
"I'm catholic. I practice my faith in a simple and private way. I believe in the principles that Jesus spoke about, and I try to be a good example for my family and for others: treat people the way you want to be treated. It's not too complicated. It is important that we have such teachings in order to become a better society."
Denzel Washington once said:
“The only thing for me is to understand God! That's the only way I can stay humble."
The Oscar-winning American actor repeatedly gives lectures to young and emerging actors, where he almost always draws attention to the importance of religion.
Gary Sinise CSI: New York, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, and Death Row, is married, has three children, converted to the Catholic faith in 2010, and since then has been participating in many charity events.
Leah Remini returned to the Catholic faith with her husband, Angelo Pagen, after 35 years of Scientology, and has now become one of Scientology's biggest critics. He said this about finding his inner peace:
"alone, I sat and prayed, said my rosary. To me, this is what religion should be: a wonderful thing”.
Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey goes to church regularly because he feels it is important to think about his life, there he can only think deeply about his current work, here he reevaluates his everyday life in order to become a better person.
"The essence of faith is that Jesus is the son of God and died for our sins. Even when I was a child, it was important to make time to pray, even if I was tired, if only for an hour or half an hour. I noticed how much this was needed and missed. I need time to take stock of the past week, to say thank you, to think about the future and what I could do better"
added the actor.
Actor and producer Mark Wahlberg is also a family man and goes to church every day, even during filming.
"The moment I started focusing on my faith, amazing things started happening in my life. And I don't just mean professionally. I want to serve God and be a good person... Being Catholic is the most important aspect of my life."
The famous Irish actor Pierce Brosnan also said:
"Being Catholic is in my DNA."
His faith helped him through the loss of his wife and his daughter's cancer, the star said: "It always helps to have a little prayer up your sleeve. All things considered, you have to have something at the very end, and for me it is God, Jesus, my Catholic upbringing, my faith.”
Sources: vasarnap.hu , 777blog , Blikk , tv24 , Képmás
Featured image: vasarnap.hu
