Close Calls: These Stars Cheated Death — OK! Looks Back At Their Epic Tales Of Survival

A brush with death can be scary — just ask some of these celebrities. OK! is looking back at some of their epic tales of survival. Keep scrolling to see which A-listers made the list. 

A surprise 2019 birthday trip to Mexico got off to a rocky start when Jennifer Aniston's plane was forced to make an emergency landing two hours after departure. “On takeoff, we heard an explosion,” recalled Jen, 51, who was traveling to Cabo San Lucas with pals (including BFF Courteney Cox) for a girls’ getaway. Panic set in and “everybody started texting their spouses and their children!”

Thankfully, they eventually made it to their destination in one piece. “We were very lucky,” Cox later said.

It wasn’t the 60th birthday celebration the Spanish actor had in mind.  On August 10, Antonio Banderas took to Twitter to tell fans he’d tested positive for COVID-19. While his loved ones have been worried sick about the star, a source tells OK! that Antonio’s doing everything in his power to fight the deadly virus. “He’s easily fatigued and has to lie down a lot, but he won’t let it get the better of him,” shares the source, adding that with his girlfriend of five years, Nicole Kimpel, is by his side.

Fortunately, Banderas is making the best of a terrifying situation. “He’s telling pals he’s been catching up on his reading and writing. That’s Antonio — always trying to put a spin on things!” the insider added.

At 16, The O.C. alum was in near-fatal car crash that left her unconscious for two days and altered the course of her life. “I was hanging out with people I probably shouldn’t have been hanging out with, pretending to drink beer and acting cool,” she said. When they got into a head-on collision, it was a wake-up call for Rachel, 38, who still gets migraines from the accident. “It made me go in a different direction from the self-destructive route I was on."

It took Sharon Stone seven years to fully recover from the stroke and brain hemorrhage she suffered in 2001. “I didn’t get to the hospital until day three or four of my stroke,” the Basic Instinct actress, 62, later said, noting that her odds of survival were small. “Most people die.  I had a one percent chance of living by the time I got surgery — and they wouldn’t know for a month if I would live.”

Over the years, Leonardo DiCaprio had a few near-death experiences, including a skydiving mishap, a white-knuckler with a faulty plane engine, and a narrow escape with a malfunctioning oxygen tank. But DiCaprio confessed that his brush with killer sharks while scuba diving was perhaps the most frightening. “A great white jumped into my cage,” he recalled of the shark attack. “Half its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me!” Looking back, the actor, 45, knows how fortunate he is to be alive. “If a cat has nine lives,” he said, “I think I’ve used a few.”