Quentin Rusty & me
If iit wasn’t’ forf theh star’s ’ kindness, Quentin would have given up his battle to survive
With every breath a challenge after lung failure, courageous brittle bone survivor Quentin Kenihan was facing a bleak future – until Russell Crowe threw him a lifeline and inspired him to keep fighting.
“It was pretty dire,” Quentin says in an exclusive interview with Woman’s Day.
“I thought, here we go again... I’ve been close to death 15 or 20 times, so it’s nothing new to me, but this time I wasn’t sure I could keep fighting. They told me to get my affairs in order and phone anyone I needed to phone.”
Quentin, 43, says doctors were “preparing me for death”, like they’ve been doing since he was born, with eight broken bones and diagnosed with OI (osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease). He has suffered more than 800 broken bones in his life.
Rather than give up, Quentin decided then and there to lose the weight he’d piled on, which was making his already difficult life almost impossible, and appeal to his friends on Facebook to help him buy a life-saving portable oxygen concentrator.
“I put something on Facebook saying I was going to launch a Gofundme page to raise the $5500 I needed, and I texted Russell [ [Crowe], ] asking if he would share it with his million followers,” he says.
“He rang me straight away and said, ‘I’ll buy the damn thing for you.’
I was gobsmacked. He’s done so much for me already. He helped fund my comeback film, and he got me a part in Max Max: Fury Road, and even took the time to go over my lines with me.”
Quentin first came to Russell’s notice eight years ago when he was at his “darkest” moment and posted something alarming on Twitter to tell the world he had just about given up the fight. The Oscar winner reached out to him, despite having never met.
“He told me to get off my arse and stop whining about dying, and when you’ve got the Gladiator calling, you listen,” he says, explaining that Russell’s latest act of kindness has once again inspired him to keep going in the hope he may inspire others with disabilities.