| I remember the celebrity premiere for the first “X-Men” movie, on Ellis Island in summer 2000. I was shooting some photos, covering the event with my friend Rob for his website. Amid the beautiful glitterati on the red carpet (if you’ve ever seen Halle Berry in person, for instance, you know that she’s structurally perfect – like looking at sculpture) was an interesting sight. It was an actor I recognized, someone who has teetered on the edge of the Hollywood A-list for years. And wow, was he making a spectacle of himself. He was, simply put, trashed. At an event where perfectly dressed perfect people were quite perfectly poised and posed as the flashbulbs flared and the microphones darted here and there, he was a mess.
Then I heard a couple years later that he was saved. Saved, as in, brought into the Kingdom of God and washed in the blood of the Lamb. That kind of saved. I guess I was relieved when I heard it, because when I saw him at that celeb event, I quite frankly worried about him. Of course, I can’t follow him around now and watch his lifestyle to see if he’s really living in a “safer” way, but I guess I found comfort in the idea that he was now pouring his considerable energy into the work of the Kingdom. And that maybe he wouldn’t OD or drive his expensive sports car into a tree or fall off a pier or anything like that.
So then I read the news today that Russell Crowe – who has a bit of a bad-boy image – is gettin’ himself baptized. He built a Byzantine chapel on his country estate in Australia, and he’s decided that since he’s had his kids baptized, he should be baptized himself.
"There is something much bigger that drives us all. I'm willing to take that leap of faith," he told Men’s Journal magazine.
Well, OK, that doesn’t mean he’s going right into pulpit supply, but still, it makes me wonder … If a bell rings every time an angel gets its wings, what happens every time a member of our fast-living Hollywood culture takes a dunk (or a sprinkle)?
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