Chad Michael Murray Says Deathbed Experience Got Him Into Acting

The “Freakier Friday” actor revealed that he once spent nearly three months in a hospital over a teenage health scare that left him having “visions.”

“I was 15, and my intestines had twisted. And I was hospitalized for two and a half months,” the actor shared during an appearance on the “Great Company” podcast with Jamie Laing last week.

“I had internal bleeding. I lost 50% of my blood. I was on my deathbed,” he said.

When asked by Laing if he remembered the experience, the 43-year-old said he was “in and out of consciousness,” but he “had visions.”

“I don’t want to get too specific about all that stuff, but 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,” he said. “And they gave me a blood transfusion to save my life.”

“But regardless, you’re in there for two and a half months and, you know, my organs shut down because you have blood all coagulated around them and they got to wait ’til everything [clears up],” he said. “So anyway, I had to have a second surgery to clean everything up.”

If there can be a bright side to a monthslong hospital stay, Murray found one. One of his nurses, who was a model herself, told Murray that he should also get into the industry.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to model,’” he shared. “‘I want to be an actor. I love film and television. Like, 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.”

The rest, of course, is history, as Murray quickly found success in Los Angeles. He recently admitted that he “was not prepared for any of it.”

“You’re put in a position of power where you can bring the whole house of cards down by making poor choices,” he said in an interview with The New York Times, published last week. “But you’re not mature enough. You don’t know up from down.”

Murray would later become a teenage heartthrob, known for his roles in “Freaky Friday” and “A Cinderella Tale.”