Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow battle aliens and international conspiracies as Captain America, Iron Man, and Pepper Potts in The Avengers movies, but in the real world, their good deeds are a bit more down to Earth.
Ryan Wilcox has battled various forms of cancer for most of his 18 years, and has been diagnosed with leukemia for the second time. Ryan is a big fan of Captain America, and his classmates started campaigning for him to meet Cap actor Chris Evans under the hashtag #RyanStrong. The campaign picked up plenty of social media momentum, and actually got a response from Evans himself.
The surprises didn’t end there. A couple weeks later, none other than Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow showed up at Ryan’s San Diego-area home (you can check out some of the meeting above). True to form, Robert Downey Jr. tried to lure Ryan over to Team Iron Man with some sweet Avengers swag, but Ryan wasn’t biting. Presumably they didn’t discuss that whole Cap being a member of Hydra thing.
In the end, Evans, Downey and Paltrow hung around with Wilcox for around an hour, and left him with plenty of swag, goodies, and hopefully a little extra inspiration to keep fighting.
If you’d like to chip in to help support Ryan and his family, you can do that right here.
(via Fox 5 San Diego)
