23 Wholesome Behind-The-Scenes Celeb Facts

1.

Viggo Mortensen loved the two horses he rode while filming Lord of the Rings so much that he bought them after production wrapped. He also purchased the horse Arwen rode and gave it to Arwen’s stunt double, as he “knew how much she liked that horse.”

2.

Actual young cancer patients were cast in Patch Adams, which featured Robin Williams helping sick kids through laughter. Patient Cameron Brooke Stanley, who was 7 when she appeared in the film, described Williams making the kids laugh even when the cameras weren’t rolling and spending a lot of time with them overall. “Not just when the cameras are on, when they’re off; he just wants to be someone’s friend, like a best friend. He wants to make someone laugh that’s sad. He was just so wonderful,” she said.

3.

Robin Williams would also make the kids on set laugh in Mrs. Doubtfire. In a tribute to Williams, Mara Wilson, who starred in the film, wrote, “Robin would do anything to make me and the other kids laugh. Those hand puppets that dance alongside the genie in Aladdin’s ‘Friend Like Me?’ That must have been his suggestion because Robin made those in real life. He’d break them out between takes to entertain us between takes. ‘I don’t like you,’ his left hand would say to his right. ‘You smell like poop!’ I would laugh uproariously — I was 5, so poop jokes were the height of hilarity — as his right hand yelled back, ‘Well, there’s no toilet paper at my house!'” Mara continued, “He seemed to know instinctively what we would find funny and never had to resort to saying anything that was inappropriate for children.”

4.

One more Robin Williams fact: After 9/11, he rushed to donate blood to help the injured. Afterward, he entertained everyone in line waiting to donate with his improvised comedy.

5.

Samuel L. Jackson’s affinity for the word “motherfucker” is actually very wholesome — he used to get bullied when he was a kid for having a stutter, and he would use “motherfucker” to help ground him in the sounds he needed to make. “It flips a switch that stops the dddd and the bbbb,” he told Howard Stern. So basically, the crass word that has become Jackson’s signature came from a speech method to make him feel more confident and comfortable.

6.

We all know Keanu Reeves is a very pure human. But did you know he started his own private cancer foundation to fund children’s hospitals and cancer research? He doesn’t have his name attached to its title, as he doesn’t want it to be about him. He donated 70% of his salary from The Matrix to leukemia research and even cared for his sister when she was ill with leukemia.

7.

Harrison Ford is a volunteer search and rescue helicopter pilot in Teton County in Wyoming. He has used his helicopter on multiple rescue missions, including the time he rescued a hiker who got sick on Table Mountain and the time he rescued a lost boy scout by Yellowstone. He was also the Young Eagles volunteer chairman and piloted over 300 Young Eagles flights for kids.

8.

In our last post, we talked about how Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman took on parental roles for Mara Wilson while she was filming Matilda, as her mother had breast cancer and her parents were often in the hospital. But we left out part of the story — that he brought a copy of Matilda to Wilson’s mother while she was in the hospital so she could watch it, as she knew she wouldn’t live long enough to see it come out in theaters.

9.

Also, Mara was embarrassed to do the iconic dance scene in Matilda in front of the whole cast and crew, so Danny made the entire cast dance with her so she wouldn’t be self-conscious.

10.

Williams and DeVito aren’t the only actors to have sweet relationships with child actors on set. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to help Alyssa Milano with her homework on the set of Commando — though he usually had trouble getting the answer right.

11.

Also in the last post, we talked about Dolly Parton’s book program, which sends books to any families who need them. Well, during the pandemic, she would also read books aloud for kids in a series titled “Goodnight with Dolly.”

12.

She also created the Dollywood Foundation in 1988 and started the Buddy Program, which gave $500 to every middle schooler in her home county of Sevier in Tennessee who finished high school, dramatically decreasing dropout rates. This later extended to a $500 grant for anyone from Sevier Country who wanted to attend Hiwassee College and five $15,000 college scholarships to high school seniors.

13.

Oh, and did you know she donated $1 million to coronavirus research, which led to the creation of the Moderna COVID vaccine?

14.

Like Dolly, Morgan Freeman has also done charitable work to support education and literacy in the South. With his daughter, he started the Tallahatchie River Foundation, a nonprofit for childhood education in Mississippi. Though he doesn’t see it as a charity — “this is what I have to do,” he said when accepting an award for his charitable work at Variety’s Unite4:Humanity event.

15.

Speaking of supporting education…Denzel Washington once paid for a group of Howard students to attend a prestigious theater program at the British American Drama Academy — and guess who one of the students ended up being? Chadwick Boseman.

16.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when restaurant workers everywhere were out of a job, Guy Fieri helped fundraise $25 million to support them. “You know, so many people work in the restaurant industry in multiple jobs, second jobs, single moms, single parents, students, retirees. And the restaurant industry is massively important to our communities,” Fieri said. “And so, when I saw this coming, I said, ‘We got to do something to get some money to these folks.'”

17.

Fieri also frequently helps feed firefighters, first responders, and those displaced by wildfires. For example, during the 2018 Camp Fire, he helped provide a Thanksgiving for the affected families.

18.

In case you didn’t know, at the start of her current world tour, Olivia Rodrigo launched Fund 4 Good, which supports women’s access to reproductive health resources. She’s been donating a portion of her ticket sales to abortion funds, and local abortion funds have been present at her concerts to give out resources — including Plan B, which was present at past concerts, though this is no longer the case.

19.

There’s no shortage of wholesome facts about Mr. Rogers, but one of the sweetest is that he would always announce when he was feeding the fish on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood because he once got a letter from a blind girl concerned his fish were not being fed.

20.

While filming the first two Harry Potter films, Daniel Radcliffe saw that Richard Harris (the original Dumbledore) was having trouble remembering his lines, so he pretended he needed practice and asked him to run lines.

21.

Another sweet HP fact I love is that Rupert Grint once doodled an unflattering drawing of Alan Rickman while filming a scene in Potions class — and then realized Rickman was standing right behind him. Rickman actually made him sign it and kept the drawing for years, saying he was “very fond of it.”

22.

I’m sorry, one more HP one — on set, Gary Oldman taught Daniel Radcliffe to play songs on the guitar. Oldman even apparently bought Dan a bass guitar.

23.

And finally, in case you haven’t checked it out, Jeremy Renner has a really wholesome show on Disney+ called Rennervations where he refurbishes buses and firetrucks to be community resources and aid in charity projects worldwide.