From Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz to Pedro Pascal: 14 celebrities who owe their success to another celebrity

It is already known: friends are friends and although it is a phrase made, it is still a great truth. A friend or friend is there in good times and in bad times and knows how to help when you are going through a difficulty or at least is going to try. In this note we review 14 friendship stories, the kind that undoubtedly marked the lives of Drew Barrymore, Pedro Pascal, Salma Hayek, Matt Damon, Johnny Depp and Selena Gomez, among others.

Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz

Drew Barrymore has suffered from alcoholism and drug problems since he was a teenager and if it weren’t for the support of his great friends, like Cameron Diaz, he might never have overcome them. Thanks in part to an intervention organized by his friends in 2019, in which Diaz was present, Barrymore stopped drinking for good. Although it was a “difficult” conversation, as Diaz recounted in an exclusive interview with The Los Angeles Times: “I knew that if we all stayed with her and gave her the support she needed, she would find her way. I have absolute faith in her. You can’t even imagine how hard it was to be her as a child and then she had the ability to save herself.” The start of his own program The Drew Barrymore Show, in 2019, was the nail in the coffin. “I think the opportunity that the program offered me woke me up,” Barrymore revealed, adding: “I realized that I couldn’t do my job well if I wasn’t sober.”

Sarah Paulson and Pedro Pascal

Pedro Pascal is going through a great moment thanks to his leading roles in two popular series: The Last of Us and The Mandalorian. But it hasn’t always been this way, as his friend Sarah Paulson recalls. They both met in the early 90s when they were starting their careers. “There were times when I would give him my daily wages from some job I was at so he would have some money to eat,” Paulson said in an interview with Esquire magazine. But she always knew he had talent, and according to her, it’s now that Pascal is just getting off the ground. “I think he’s ready to take the reins from rom-com leads of the past like Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson. He can be all of that. Let’s do a Die Hard remake with Pedro. Let all the Lethal Weapon movies be remade with Pedro,” she joked.

Isabel Jimenez and Sara Carbonero

The friendship between Isabel Jiménez and Sara Carbonero began when the two worked as presenters for Telecinco 12 years ago and since then they have become inseparable. During this time, they have accompanied each other in everything: getaways, events, breakups, raising their children (they have two each), and even a business project with the clothing brand they created together, Slow Love. When Sara Carbonero, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2019, was admitted to the hospital again last November, Jiménez became her faithful representative. Three months after her operation, Jiménez informed the public that her friend was fine but, out of respect for her privacy, she did not want to reveal details. “Sarah is terrific. She’s fine. The operation is over, ”she said at an event in February.

Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow

Nearly two decades after the last episode of Friends aired, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, and Lisa Kudrow are still great friends. Proof of this was the support shown when Cox unveiled his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 27, an act that was attended by his two former colleagues and Laura Dern, another actress who is also a close friend of Cox. In her thank you speech, Cox underscored how important her partners have been to her. “They are wonderful friends and they are family. We are like sisters”.

Later, Aniston returned the thanks: “From the very beginning, when we met her, she was immediately inclusive, warm, loving and interested in knowing everything about you. As your fans, we want to thank you for making us laugh. You are one of the funniest human beings on planet Earth.”

Daniel Radcliffe and Maggie Smith

“She basically got me the role of Harry Potter, so I owe her everything,” Daniel Radcliffe admitted of his partner Maggie Smith (who plays Professor McGonagall in JK Rowling’s saga) during an interview in 2011. “I had worked with she in David Copperfield and then when she joined the cast of Harry Potter she told the director [Chris Columbus]: ‘You have to test this boy’”.

Nicolas Cage and Johnny Depp

It was Nicolas Cage who suggested Johnny Depp try his luck in the world of acting. The moment was during a game of Monopoly in the early eighties when the protagonist of The Legend of the Lost Treasure put Depp, who at the time wanted to make a career in music, in contact with his representative. As Cage told The New York Times: “I sent him to see my agent, who sent him to his first audition, which was for A Nightmare on Elm Street. He got the part that same day.”

Tom Hanks and Charlize Theron

When Tom Hanks won the Cecil B. Demille Award in 2020, Charlize Theron -in charge of presenting it to him- thanked him with an emotional speech. Theron recalled how during the audition for What You Do!, a film directed by Hanks, the actress thought that she had “ruined everything”. “I had forgotten to breathe and Tom looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry, can you give me five minutes? I have to go out, but when I get back we’ll repeat this scene again.’ Tom didn’t need five minutes, I needed five minutes. Those five minutes were a gift to me because he saw a young actress, sweating, trying to hide her panic attack and her thick South African accent. That’s the kind of man he is and that’s why we love Tom Hanks.”

Ed Sheeran and Jamie Foxx

In 2010, before becoming famous, the musician Ed Sheeran slept on actor Jamie Foxx’s sofa. As Foxx told The Graham Norton Show, the “Shape of You” singer knew Foxx had a radio show, The Foxxhole, and asked him to let him play some of his songs on it. After listening to him, Foxx realized his talent and opened the doors of his house to the young aspirant. “I told him, ‘Look, I know you don’t have anywhere to go, so you can stay here.’ He fed her and even my daughter asked: ‘Now who do you have at home?’

Kesha and Taylor Swift

After a judge refused to grant singer Kesha her request to be released from her record contract with musician-producer Dr. Luke, whom she accused in 2016 of sexual harassment, Swift donated $250,000 to help her battle legal. In addition to her, other musicians such as Lady Gaga and Lorde raised their voices on social networks to protest against the court decision.

Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek

Friends since the beginning of their careers, actresses Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek share one of the best-known friendships in Hollywood. One of the many moments in which they showed support was after Hayek confessed that she had been harassed by producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017. Cruz later uploaded a post on Instagram dedicated to her friend: “I love you, my beautiful friend. But why do we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity? I think it’s because we as women have been artistically devalued to an indecent state, to the point where the film industry stopped making an effort to figure out what female audiences wanted to see and what stories we wanted to tell.”

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon

The two leads from Seeking Destiny first met in the 1980s, when Ben Affleck was eight and Matt Damon was 10. Affleck took on a stalker to protect Damon when their friendship began. “I remember that was a big moment,” Damon said during an interview on The Conan O’Brien Show in 2019. “He would put himself in a bad situation for me. He is a good friend, ”he added later.

In addition, a few weeks ago, on the occasion of the promotion of the movie Air, they also recounted that for years they shared a common bank account to be able to pay their expenses: “In retrospect, it may sound a bit strange, but as long as one of us had money, We knew they wouldn’t cut off our power.”

Paula Echevarría, Marta Hazas and Cecilia Freire

The end of the Velvet television series did not mean the end of the so-called “Velvet girls” since, 7 years after the premiere of the last episode of the series that brought them together, in December 2016, Paula Echevarría, Marta Hazas and Cecilia Freire It continues to be one of the best-known friendly trios in Spanish show business. Although they haven’t worked together since then, the group has never stopped hanging out; The last time they were seen in public was last February, in an Italian restaurant in Madrid. To document the occasion, Hazas uploaded a photo to her Instagram account with a message that made it clear that her relationship with her friends has only strengthened over the years: “Profession gifts. The art of speaking at the same time because we don’t have time to tell each other everything, how important friends are”.

Ana de Armas and Elena Furiase

Ana de Armas and Elena Furiase met as co-stars in El internado and since then, in 2007, they have been inseparable. De Armas, who moved from her native Cuba to Madrid at the age of 18, recalls how difficult it was for her to move to another country and how Elena and her family welcomed her. In an interview with Vogue, she recounted that she considers Lolita Flores, Furiase’s mother, as a mother too. “The days that I was sick, crying and missing my parents in Cuba, the three of us would throw ourselves in bed and they would make me die laughing,” she recounted. To this day, De Armas and Furiase are still great friends, as seen in the Instagram video that Furiase uploaded after learning of her friend’s Oscar nomination for her performance in Rubia, where she congratulated her and showed her affection. .

Selena Gomez and Francia Raisa

Selena Gomez and Francia Raisa have been friends for a decade, but their relationship became publicly known when Raisa donated a kidney to Gomez, who suffers from lupus, in 2017. Despite recent rumors, that the friendship had broken up, Gomez recently clarified that it is not true. In March, she conveyed her deep appreciation for her friend on an Apple TV show in which different characters read letters of thanks to those who have inspired them. Then the actress called her “best friend of hers” of hers, and she confessed that, at the moment Raisa agreed to do the transplant, Gomez was overwhelmed by her generosity. The “Calm Down” singer added: “I will never be as indebted to anyone as I am to France.” Both have the date of the operation tattooed on their arms.