‘One Tree Hill’ Star Chad Michael Murray Recalls Health Scare That Had Him on His ‘Deathbed’

Chad Michael Murray is opening up about a health scare he had when he was a teenager that left him on his “deathbed.”

The One Tree Hill star revealed on the Great Company podcast that he “spent a lot of time in hospitals” before he hit it big.

“I was 15 and my intestines had twisted, and I was hospitalized for two and a half months,” Murray told host Jamie Laing. “It was a lot. So we had surgery; I had internal bleeding; I lost 50% of my blood; I was on my deathbed; I was in and out of consciousness, and so I have 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. They gave me a blood transfusion to save my life. My nurse did, and saved my life.”

“But regardless, you’re in there for two and a half months,” the Freakier Friday star continued. “And my organs shut down because you have blood all coagulated around them, and they got to wait till everything. So anyway, I had to have a second surgery to clean everything up.”

Murray, who didn’t start acting until he was close to 20, admitted that when he got out, he went from 180 to 118 pounds. “I was a skeleton when I got out,” he said. “It was the scariest thing ever. I remember looking in the mirror the first time, going, ‘Who is that?’ I didn’t… like, I cried. I couldn’t believe that I was looking back at that guy.”

Additionally, the experience helped strengthen his relationship with his father, and it’s what he’s most grateful for. “And my relationship with my father became really close,” Murray explained. “Because my dad, raising five kids on his own, came to the hospital every single day. And he spent multiple, multiple, countless nights with me. When he has four more kids at home. And so he would have our nanny come by. And she’d spend the nights with the kids sometimes.”

“If he knew I was really struggling, but he would go home, he’d put dinner on the table, he’d work with the kids on their homework, then he’d come back to see me again,” he continued. “And he had a full-time job as an air traffic controller. The man is tough as nails, and he did that for us. And so I’m overly beyond grateful. And that’s when our relationship really bonded. So that’s what I got out of it.”