Everyone remembers what they were doing on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, but Gwyneth Paltrow only recently discovered that her simple actions saved another person’s life.
Talking at the Venice Film Festival the Contagion star explained the moment she had an awkward moment with a woman on the street in Manhattan US Weekly reported.
“Basically, what happened was I had gone to a yoga class very early,” she said.
“I was on the way home (driving in her car) and it was the morning of September 11 — not that I knew at the time what that meant — and a girl was jaywalking across the street and we kind of both stopped at the same time and waited a really long time.”
After a brief stand-off, Paltrow waved the pedestrian across.
Last month the 37-year-old actress received a letter from the same woman named Lara Lundstrom Clarke who explained how she had saved her life.
“Ten years later I got a letter from her saying that she had been late for work and we had that thing and she went down to the Christopher Street station to catch her train to go down to the World Trade Centre where she worked on the 77th floor of the South Tower and the train was just pulling out,” she said.
“It was an extraordinary story and all I could think about is all of the people who had experiences like that that day, but aren’t able to reach out because it wasn’t a recognisable person.
“I think a lot of fates were changed that day obviously and I am very humbly happy to be a part of her story.”