When he was 11 years old, actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer and singer Adam DeVine experienced a brutal and life-changing event that nearly killed him. In this Off Camera interview, he shares an important lesson he learned while recovering—a lesson that has informed the way he pursues his career.

In the summer of 1995, DeVine and his friend went to the store to get candy. Walking his bike across a street in Omaha, Nebraska, he was suddenly struck by a cement truck. The impact pulled him under the two front wheels of the 42-ton vehicle and dragged DeVine 500 feet.

However, his bicycle absorbed some of the brunt of the truck’s force, which allowed him to hang onto his life by a sliver. DeVine was knocked unconscious from the impact and put in a medically induced coma.

Two weeks later, DeVine woke up in intensive care shocked to discover his condition. “I broke everything except my right femur from the waist down—crushed my legs from the knees down,” he said.

DeVine came close to having his legs amputated. He also suffered broken ribs and punctured lungs, was fighting multiple infections, and was at very high risk of having multiple organ failures. Medical experts were questioning if he’d ever be able to walk again.

Over the next two and a half years, DeVine underwent 26 surgeries. In the beginning, he had to learn to lift his head off the bed and eventually to sit up. “I was a noodle, I couldn’t do anything, so I had to train to get up and move,” he said.

The process of relearning to stand was difficult and painful. At one point he started to cry, and wanted to give up when his physical therapist smacked him in the face, yelling “Yes, you can! Never say no! Never give up! Always one foot in front of the other!”

The hit shocked him into focusing on his recovery. DeVine regained full movement in his legs.

By the eighth grade, he was able to play football. “I think that experience helped me realize that anything is possible,” he said. “I feel like I had a good perspective on how short life is and how, if you have goals, you should work hard to achieve them. And also take things one step at a time. That’s the lesson. Because I truly had to take it one step at a time—relearning how to walk.”

Years later, in pursuit of his dream to become an actor and comedian, DeVine moved to Los Angeles. A longtime fan of A&E’s An Evening At the Improv, he sought work at the Hollywood Improv, but there were no positions available. “I came back every day for a month and was like, ‘Is there jobs?’ Until finally I just wore them down,” he said.

DeVine worked the ticket booth, answered phones, attended improv classes and did stand-up comedy. In 2006, DeVine and his close friends Blake Anderson, Anders Holm and Kyle Newacheck started the sketch-comedy group Mail Order Comedy. They did live tours and uploaded one video per week onto Myspace and YouTube for two years.

Together, the four friends went on to create, produce and star in the Comedy Central series Workaholics from 2011 to 2017. DeVine also starred in Adam DeVine’s House Party for three seasons, a comedy television series that’s part stand-up and part sitcom.

The actor moved into films, playing Bumper Allen in the musical comedies Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2 for which he was declared Choice Movie Villain at the Teen Choice Awards. He currently stars in the HBO comedy series The Righteous Gemstones alongside John Goodman.

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