Former The Walking Dead star Jon Bernthal was supposed to star opposite Ryan Gosling in First Man, but he had to pull out of the project after his 2-year-old daughter, Adeline, had a seizure and fell into a coma.
Adeline was diagnosed with encephalitis, a vital infection that causes swelling of the brain. Bernthal revealed in a new interview with Men’s Health that Adeline’s coma lasted three days. When she woke up, she did not recognize her family immediately, which made Bernthal nervous.
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The actor’s wife, Erin Angle, a trauma nurse, helped Adeline by staying calm and “pouring love into our daughter every step of the way,” Bernthal said.
“People talk about bravery like fake macho bravery, but my wife didn’t flinch,” the Punisher actor told Men’s Health. “What I saw in my wife was courage and beauty unlike I’d ever seen.”
Adeline made a full recovery and is now 3 years old.
Bernthal and Angle have been married since September 2010, notes Us Weekly. The two are also parents to sons Henry, 7, and Billy, 5.
The couple met at a bar in Washington, D.C. after he returned from performing in Russia. He saw one of his friends talking to two women, so he went over to them.
“I came over and was just rudely messing around, and I know this is the corniest thing in the world, but when I actually saw Erin, it was literally like angels were singing. I had never seen anyone so beautiful,” Bernthal told Men’s Health.
After talking for more than 45 minutes, they started dating. They moved to Boston while Bernthal studied at Harvard and Angle worked at Mass General. They later moved to Los Angeles, where they broke up and Angle moved to San Francisco. Bernthal would not let her go though, so he drove up to San Francisco to put flowers and written poems on her car.
Bernthal got two tickets to a Willie Nelson show and managed to get the country legend to perform a song for her.
“I snuck backstage. I found this beautiful postcard and wrote Willie this long letter and rolled him a beautiful joint and told him the situation with me and my woman,” Bernthal told Men’s Health. “I told him she’s a good-hearted woman in love with a good-timin’ man, and I asked him to play this one song ‘Always on My Mind’ for us, and he did.”
The two have been together ever since.
Bernthal played Shane on The Walking Dead and made a cameo appearance this season. He also stars as the title character on Marvel’s The Punisher, which will return for a second season in January.
Photo credit: Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images
