(NEW YORK) — NFL cornerback Pierre Desir is stepping up to help residents of Texas who have been affected by the cold weather sweeping the state, which has led to power outages and water shut-offs.
The 30-year-old native of Haiti has donated 10,000 meals to the Houston Food Bank.
While Desir has no connection to Houston, he said it felt like “the right thing to do,” ESPN reports, citing his agent.
Desir, who is now a free agent, last played for the Baltimore Ravens in 2020.
Rick Kern/Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — Once upon a time, Matthew McConaughey was in consideration to play Titanic‘s heartthrob character, Jack Dawson. As we all know, Leonardo DiCaprio scored the leading role in the Oscar-winning film — but McConaughey claims he almost nabbed it.
Speaking with Rob Lowe Thursday on theLiterally with Rob Lowepodcast, the Dallas Buyers Club star shut down the rumors that he actually turned down the opportunity.
“So I went and read with Kate Winsletand it was not one of the auditions. It was like they filmed it, so it was like into screen test time,” the 51-year old actor recalled, saying that the producers and Winslet followed him outside when it was over and made him believe he smashed it out of the park.
Said McConaughey, “They were like, ‘That went great!’ I mean, kind of like hugs. I really thought it was going to happen.”
“It did not,” he sighed, which led to years of rumors speculating why McConaughey lost out to DiCaprio.
He eventually confronted director James Cameron about the scuttlebutt to ask if any of it was true.
“I asked Cameron about this because the, sort of, gossip over the years that I had heard and would see written about me was that I had the role of Titanic and turned it down,” said McConaughey, adding that he partially believed the rumor and thought an agent of his was responsible for passing on a role of a lifetime.
“Not factual,” he found out, “I did not get offered that role… Someone took something he said and that ran.”
“I never got offered that as far as I know, I’m telling you,” stressed the Oscar winner. “I did go have a good screen test, thought I had the role… but did not get the role.”
ABC NewsBy MAX GOLEMBO and EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — An icy blast is stretching from Dallas to New York City Friday morning — but warmth is finally on the horizon for the South.
Friday’s storm focuses on the East Coast, with flooding rain in the Carolinas, an icy mix in the mid-Atlantic and snow from New Jersey to Massachusetts.
Philadelphia, New York and Boston could see 1 to 3 more inches of snow.
The snow and ice will begin to move out Friday night.
Meanwhile, a hard freeze warning is in effect in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, where temperatures are in the teens and 20’s Friday morning.
The freeze will finally lift Friday afternoon and the South is expected to see temperatures rise to the 50’s and 60’s this weekend.
After a week of historic and disastrous snow and ice in the South, over 180,000 customers are still without power in Texas and over 111,000 are in the dark in Mississippi Friday morning.
Two C-17 military transport aircraft will be heading to Galveston and Corpus Christi, Texas, to deliver supplies, a senior defense official told ABC News Thursday evening. The official said the aircraft will mainly be used to deliver water.
Most of Jackson, Mississippi, is currently without water and city officials say there’s no timeline on when it will be restored.
“We do not have a definitive timeline as to when the water will be restored in the tanks,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said during a news conference Thursday.
The city will begin water distribution at several sites Friday.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events:
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION Toronto 110, Milwaukee 96 Miami 118, Sacramento 110 Brooklyn 109, LA Lakers 98
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE Washington 3, Buffalo 1 Columbus 3, Nashville 0 Toronto 7, Ottawa 3 Pittsburgh 4, NY Islanders 1 NY Rangers 3, Philadelphia 2 (SO) St. Louis 3, San Jose 2 (OT) Los Angeles 3, Arizona 2 New Jersey 3, Boston 2 Minnesota 3, Anaheim 1 Tampa Bay at Dallas (Postponed)
TOP-25 COLLEGE BASKETBALL Gonzaga 87, Saint Mary’s (Cal) 65 Michigan 71, Rutgers 64 Ohio St. 92, Penn St. 82 Wichita St. 68, Houston 63 Iowa 77, Wisconsin 62 San Diego St., 67 Fresno St. 53 West Virginia at Baylor (Postponed) Alabama at Texas A&M (Postponed) Texas at Oklahoma (Postponed) Texas at Iowa St. (Postponed) Texas Tech at TCU (Postponed)
Courtesy of A24(LOS ANGELES) — The film Minari is getting a lot of buzz this awards season — some saying it has a very good chance of winning some gold at the Oscars. Star Steven Yeun was nominated for best actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and he tells ABC Audio the script went far deeper than most roles he sees for Asian men in Hollywood.
“Usually I read stories from that point of view and they’re oftentimes still trying to explain itself or justify itself through something outside,” he explains. “But this one was just a story of this family and it really mirrored something that I connected to deeply so.”
Minari, which is about a Korean-American family moving to the south to start a farm, is based on the early life of its writer and director Lee Isaac Chung, who shares that he really wanted to flip the perspective of most stories you see about Asian families in the U.S.
“For me and my family growing up, we weren’t the foreigners. You know, we we were Coloradans moving to Arkansas and we had our contained world in our trailer home,” he says. “And any time we stepped outside, we’re dealing with the other and those are the people in our community. So there’s a shift in perspective there that I was kind of working with what it was like to be us.”
“And in the end, you find out we’re all the same. We’re all human,” he adds.
In addition to Minari‘s buzz, co-star Yuh-Jung Youn was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, a moment she described as “unreal.”
“It’s unreal to me. I’m not a Hollywood actress,” she says. “Hopefully people will just enjoy this movie.”
33ft/iStockBy JEANETTE TORRES-PEREZ, ABC News
