Celebrities — they’re not so different from the rest of us: they walk the same streets, they eat at the same restaurants, and occasionally they come to the rescue of a bleeding man in the street.
The latter happened Thursday night when actor John Malkovich was walking down a Toronto street and noticed a man sprawled on the sidewalk, bleeding profusely from his neck. Jim Walpole, a 77-year-old tourist from Ohio, had tripped and slashed his neck on a scaffolding pole, according to ABC News. His wife yelled for help when, out of the blue, Malkovich appeared and applied a scarf to the injured man’s neck to stop the bleeding.
Canada’s CTV News reported that Malkovich soothed the man as they waited for an ambulance to arrive, telling him that he was in good hands under the Canadian healthcare system. Walpole asked Malkovich for his name, and according to CBCNews, the actor simply and modestly replied, “John.” It wasn’t until later in the week that Walpole realized that he was in the caring hands of two-time Academy Award nominee John Malkovich. In typical superhero fashion (though it’s far from his normal role), Malkovich had disappeared from the scene by the time help had arrived.
Malkovich’s actions follow in the footsteps of a number of other famous rescuers, from Dustin Hoffman to Ryan Gosling. Their actions serve to prove that heroes aren’t just on the screen — they’re in real life, too.
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