Marvel's Eternals features some of Hollywood's biggest names, as well as a handful of rising
stars. But many of the movie's leads have had some pretty tough times over the years.
Here are some tragic details about the cast of Eternals.
Salma Hayek signed on to her first Marvel Cinematic Universe film with Eternals,
taking on the showcase role of Ajak, who acts as the link between the Eternals and
the ancient Celestials. Filming on Eternals began in late 2019,
just before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2021,
the actor told Variety that she contracted the coronavirus back in early 2020. She explained:
"My doctor begged me to go to the hospital because it was so bad.
I said, 'No, thank you. I'd rather die at home.'"
Hayek's condition deteriorated to the point where death was, at least, an outside possibility. She
spent seven weeks self-isolating in a room of her London home, so as to not
spread the virus to her husband or daughter. While Hayek never sought hospitalization,
she was hooked up to an oxygen tank at one point. More than a year after recovering,
Hayek noted she still hadn't reached her previous levels of energy. Hayek said:
"I had started doing Zooms at one point, but I could only do so many because I would get tired."
Luckily, things picked up for Hayek around the same time she received her COVID vaccination.
"I was tired a lot, until I got the vaccination, for some reason I feel fine now."
In the late 1990s and 2000s, Angelia Jolie was one of the most photographed and talked about
celebrities on the planet. Jolie hit the big time after winning an Academy Award for Girl,
Interrupted. She also frequently hit the tabloid headlines due to her estrangement from famous
father Jon Voight, as well as her high-profile romances with stars such as Jonny Lee Miller,
Billy Bob Thornton, and Brad Pitt. Having stepped back from the world of acting so as
to focus on humanitarian work, Jolie nonetheless took a featured role in Eternals as Thena,
a warrior who can turn pure energy into any weapon imaginable.
Off the screen, over the course of many years, Jolie has endured a host of mental health issues.
According to a former caregiver who spoke to Radar Online, Jolie was briefly hospitalized
for anorexia as a teenager. She once characterized herself as "unstable" to ABC News and often fought
periods of mental darkness. In 2001, Jolie told IMDb that she once considered taking her own life,
and even tried to order a hit on herself, hoping to avoid leaving her family members
with any sense of guilt or responsibility. Thankfully, her plan didn't pan out. She added,
"''The person spoke very sweetly to me, he made me think about it for a month.
And after a month other things changed in my life and I was surviving again.''
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please
call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
As Eternals begins, Dane Whitman is a regular human being, employed by the Natural History
Museum of London, and who is in a relationship with the Eternal Sersi. In Marvel Comics lore,
Dane eventually becomes a superhero operating under the name Black Knight.
For the MCU version of the character, Whitman is portrayed not-so-coincidentally by Kit Harington,
who is best known for his role as Jon Snow in HBO's epic fantasy series Game of Thrones.
Starring on an immensely and enduringly popular TV series rocketed Harington to
mega-fame and even earned him a couple of Emmy nominations.
"I'm quite sort of cynical and unsentimental about things generally, but
I think this has got me feeling quite sentimental."
But during and immediately after his Game of Thrones years, his mental and
physical health suffered greatly. In May 2019, Harington reportedly enrolled at Privé-Swiss,
a wellness facility in Connecticut to receive psychological coaching and
cognitive behavioral therapy. He was hoping to remedy stress, exhaustion, alcohol abuse,
and other mental health concerns. Harington later told The Sunday Times:
"I went through periods of real depression. Things that have happened to me since Thrones ended,
and that were happening during Thrones, were of a pretty traumatic nature."
Harrington continued,
"I definitely don’t want to be seen as a martyr or special.
I’ve been through something, it’s my stuff. If it helps someone, that’s good.”
Model-turned-actor Gemma Chan is a star on the rise, and in the last few years she's broken out
big with appearances in movies such as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Crazy Rich Asians,
and Captain Marvel. Strangely, two years after making her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut,
Chan returns to the world of celestial superheroes with a completely different
and unrelated role in Eternals. Here, she portrays Sersi, a centuries-old empath and
matter manipulator living on Earth and working as a museum curator in London.
Chan was born and raised in London, where she once witnessed a horrific and tragic event.
According to courtroom testimony, in 2012, Chan was on her way to London's
Putney Bridge tube station when she looked up and saw Frederic Russell, a man suffering from
paranoid schizophrenia, stab a 65-year-old stranger in the throat. Chan testified:
"He looked directly at me and stepped towards me. We stared at each other for
about three seconds and then the road started to fill with other people."
Chan yelled out for someone to take a photo of the attacker and call an ambulance for the victim.
The actor stayed at the scene of the crime until emergency personnel and authorities arrived.
Hammond didn't survive the attack, and police arrested Russell a few streets away.
Kumail Nanjiani makes a big impression in Eternals as the comical Kingo, an extraterrestrial
harvester of cosmic energy who hangs out on Earth in the guise of a dashing Bollywood movie star. In
2017, Nanjiani's career reached a new peak, having previously been best known for his stand-up comedy
and his supporting roles on Franklin and Bash and Silicon Valley. That year, he received an Academy
Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for The Big Sick, the film which he starred in
and co-wrote with his wife, Emily V. Gordon. Additionally named AFI's Movie of the Year,
Best Comedy at the Critics Choice Awards, and taking home a slew of festival prizes, The Big
Sick is based on the true story of the early months of Nanjiani and Gordon's relationship.
In the film, Nanjiani's character, a comedian named Kumail,
dates a graduate student named Emily, but they break up because he's too afraid to
tell his conservative Pakistani parents that he's dating a white American woman.
Shortly after the split, Emily is hospitalized with an infection and placed in an induced coma.
According to People magazine, the real Emily fell ill too, was put into a coma,
and was later diagnosed with the auto-inflammatory Still's disease.
During her long and serious hospitalization, Nanjiani remained at her side — although,
unlike in the film, the real couple never broke up.
Prior to joining the ensemble cast of Eternals as the tech wizard Phastos, Brian Tyree Henry
made his name co-starring in Atlanta. On Donald Glover's meditative FX dramedy, Henry portrays
Alfred Miles, also known as the rapper Paper Boi. In 2018, Henry received an Emmy nomination for
"Woods," a showcase episode that found Paper Boi mugged, attacked, and lost in the woods.
Throughout the ordeal, Paper Boi grapples with his grief over the loss of his mother,
which parallels Henry's real-life experiences. The episode was dedicated to Henry's mother,
Willow Kearse-Rice, who died in a traffic accident in Maryland in May 2016.
Speaking about the episode, Henry told TV Guide:
"Stephanie Robinson, who wrote this episode, really just wanted to — I don't want to say
force me to confront what these things were, but at the same time, at least
acknowledge the fact that you may not know everything and there is a feeling of being lost."
Henry's grief persisted in such a way that it affected his approach
to fame as well as his mental health. In an interview with GQ, Henry said:
"What kills me is everyone's like, 'How do you feel about this Emmy nomination?'
My mother's dead. Every time I close my eyes, I hear my necklace bang on her casket.
That's the last time I saw her. That's the only thing that gets me out of bed,
and it's sometimes the thing that keeps me in it."
Portraying the distant, mind-scrambling Eternal Druig in Marvel's Eternals is the
most high-profile role yet for Dublin-born actor Barry Keoghan. Up to this point, he's
been best known for his acclaimed work in indies and dramas such as The Killing of a Sacred Deer,
as well as minor roles in bigger projects, like Dunkirk and Chernobyl.
On the podcast Ireland Unfiltered, Keoghan discussed the lack of home stability throughout
his childhood. The actor's mother struggled with a heroin addiction, and when Keoghan
was five years old, she was no longer able to care for the future star or his brother.
Together, they entered Ireland's foster care system, where Keoghan remained until he was 12.
They would live in 13 different homes over seven years. Keoghan remembered:
"It becomes one memory. It becomes a montage in your mind."
At the age of 12, Keoghan's mother died, but even today,
he still honors his mother in his working life, telling the Irish Mirror:
"Before every audition I say a little prayer
[to her]. Because you want that little push before you go in."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255)