Coma Left Man Thinking He's Matthew McConaughey

Rory Curtis has it all sorted out now, however
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 22, 2014 10:24 AM CST
Coma Left Man Thinking He's Matthew McConaughey
Actor Matthew McConaughey poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "Interstellar" in central London, Oct. 29, 2014.   (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

One day you're a 25-year-old barber; the next, you're Matthew McConaughey. Or at least, you think you're Matthew McConaughey. That's what happened to Rory Curtis, a UK man who got in a bad car accident in England in August 2012 and came out of the six-day coma that resulted believing he was the Hollywood actor. He also spoke fluent French, despite having not studied the language in years. "I was sitting there spouting a foreign language from my hospital bed, acting all French in their sort of arrogant yet sophisticated way," explains Curtis in a new interview with the Telegraph. "Also, in my head I thought I was Matthew McConaughey. When I went to the toilet I went to look in the mirror and I was shocked because I didn't look like him, I didn't know what I was looking at."

"At times I was in [the] hospital thinking I can't wait to get out of here and back to filming movies," he continues. "I was convinced I was him and that I had his good looks as well—I know it was hopeful thinking, really." But gradually, he says, "it eventually clicked and I thought, 'He is an actor, what am I on about?'" He endured months of rehab and took an experimental drug for his brain injury (the Mirror notes he was only the second person in the country to try the drug) and is now back at work as a hairdresser—and continues to be able to speak French. (This unusual coma story involves Mandarin.)

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