Chad Michael Murray almost didn’t make it to Hollywood.
The “Freakier Friday” actor, 43, revealed he suffered a near-death experience at age 15 that involved an emergency blood transfusion and a lengthy hospital stay.
Opening up about the terrifying health scare, Murray — who got his big break as heartthrob Lucas Scott in “One Tree Hill” — shared that his intestines “had twisted” when he was just a teen.
“I was hospitalized for two and a half months. It was a lot,” he recalled on the Friday, August 8, episode of the “Great Company” podcast.
“We had surgery. I had internal bleeding, [and] I lost 50 percent of my blood. I was on my deathbed,” the actor explained, adding he was “in and out of consciousness” and doesn’t have many memories from that time.
“I just remember seeing my father, the weakest I’d ever seen him, and a priest at the end of my bed,” Murray said. “They’re talking about last rites and all that stuff, and [the nurse] gave me a blood transfusion to save my life. It saved my life.”
However, Murray wasn’t out of the clear just yet.
“Regardless, you’re in there for two months and, you know, my organs shut down because you have blood all coagulated around them, and they had to wait till everything. So, anyway, I had to have a second surgery to clean everything up,” he stated.
He also disclosed that his two nurses, Sandy and Alana, inspired him to pursue his Hollywood dreams.
“Alana says to me, ‘Oh gosh, you should model,’” he reminisced. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to model. I want to be an actor. Like, I love film and television. I want to give this gift to other people.’ She’s like, ‘Well, you can segue from modeling into acting. Look, when you get out, I’m hooking you up with a modeling company I know.’ And she meant it.”
Murray said he hardly recognized himself after the scary ordeal.
“I got out. I went from, like, 180 to 118 pounds. I was a skeleton when I got out,” he said of being discharged from the monthslong hospital stay. “It was the scariest thing ever. I remember looking in the mirror the first time going, ‘Who is that?’ I cried [and] I couldn’t believe that I was looking back at that guy.”
That experience, though, strengthened his bond with his father.
“I started my relationship with God, and my relationship with my father became really close,” Murray recalled. “My dad [was] raising five kids on his own [and] came to the hospital every single day, and he spent countless nights with me when he had four more kids at home.”
“The man is tough as nails, and he did that for us. I’m overly, like, beyond grateful. That’s when our relationship really bonded,” he added.
Years after his near-death health scare, Murray’s career skyrocketed.
He starred in the CW’s “One Tree Hill” from the pilot in 2003 to 2009, departing from the popular teen drama after Season 6 over an alleged contract negotiation dispute.
Murray later returned to the series for one episode of the final season in 2012.
The star’s other major role included starring alongside Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as the latter’s interest, Jake, in “Freaky Friday” (2003). Murray reprised his role as the hunky bad boy for the film’s sequel, “Freakier Friday,” out in theaters now.
The Post’s movie critic Johnny Oleksinski gave the follow-up film a two-and-a-half out of four stars rating, noting that while the sequel was a decent comeback for Lohan, Murray’s appearance “was shoved in like a book under a wobbly table.”
