Madeleine West has lived an experience not many of us can (thankfully) say we’ve been through — she’s been hit by a bus, literally.

The actress, author and activist was struck down on Sydney’s Oxford Street in 2001.

“I remember looking left, looking right and then I just saw stars,” she told Neil Mitchell.

“The bus had hit me square on the left side of my face, threw me a couple of metres and then I landed on that same side of my face and skidded a couple more feet, and woke up in hospital a couple of days later with severe amnesia, a stitched up face, multiple skull fractures and some fairly serious brain injuries.”

It took her a long time to heal — and she still feels the effects of the crash today — but it also forced her to ask herself a “really significant question”: Why was she an actor?

Seventeen years after the life-changing crash and still suffering anxiety around buses, West revisited the scene.

While she was there, a random stranger reached out in a remarkable act of kindness.

Press PLAY below to hear what the kind stranger did + the very important lessons being hit by a bus taught West

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Image: Graham Denholm/Getty Images