Ordinary Angels is a 2024 drama starring Hilary Swank as a hairdresser whose life is changed by a child in need of a liver transplant.

Hilary Swank stars as hairdresser Sharon in Ordinary Angels (Image: LIONSGATE)

A new addition,  Ordinary Angels, is on Netflix and the Christian drama film, which is just one of many based on a true story on the streamer, was originally released by Lionsgate in February 2024. The film received positive reviews from critics, who hailed it as a “sweet display of humanity”.

With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 84 per cent, the website’s consensus says: “With a dash of grace and circumstance, this sweet display of humanity is stabilized by Hilary Swank in a role that plays to the heartstrings of all Ordinary Angels.” Hilary Swank stars as Sharon Stevens, a successful hairdresser who finds a new life purpose after reading about a five-year-old girl called Michelle Scmitt.

Michelle, who tragically lost her mother, was in need of a liver transplant and Sharon was keen to help, rallying the community together to raise funds for the family. While she continued to form a close bond with the family in the Netflix film, she was hiding a dark secret about a drinking problem.

Determined not to let Michelle down, Sharon did everything she could to get Michelle to Omaha for the much-needed transplant, despite a countless number of obstacles getting in the way – most notably a snowstorm. Miraculously, she reached the destination in time and underwent a successful operation.

The film is based on true events that took place during the 1994 North American cold wave, which caused more than 100 deaths in the US. During this time, much of the US experienced its coldest temperatures since a major storm in 1934.

The film is based on true events that took place during the 1994 North American cold wave (Image: LIONSGATE)

Is Ordinary Angels based on a true story?

The real story took place in Louisville, Kentucky, in January 1994, when a record-breaking snowstorm that shut down the city for almost a week happened overnight. Both Michelle and her older sister Ashley were born with a rare liver disease called biliary atresia.

The condition sees the bile ducts inside and outside the liver become blocked, leading to liver deficiencies. Ashley had undergone her liver transplant in Nebraska in 1991 at the age of three, when her mother was still alive.

Tragically, in August 1992, the girls’ mother Theresa Schmitt died from complications from a rare condition called Wegener’s disease, and she was just 29 years old. The real Sharon Stevens told WTVQ she did indeed learn about the family’s plight from a newspaper article.

She said: “I saw a news article, and I’m not one to read the newspaper every day, it just happened to be there. I read it. A couple of weeks later, the children that needed the help, their mother died, before the second little girl got her transplant, and it broke my heart.”

Desperate to help, she contacted a minister at Southeast Christian Church, where she attended, and discovered the church had already been helping the family. In real life, Sharon first met Michelle Schmitt at her mother Theresa’s funeral.

Michelle had been living with her grandmother and the family’s finances had dwindled; they had no health insurance and saw no way out. Sharon helped raise tens of thousands of dollars to cover the family’s medical expenses, which included medication, hospital runs to Omaha, and housing for the family.

Ashley Schmitt with filmmaker Jon Gunn (Image: GETTY)

Sharon had also pre-arranged for the family to travel by private jet from Louisville to Omaha for the transplant. Like in the film, no one could have predicted the call would come the morning after a record-breaking 16-inch snowfall.

The day before Michelle was due to undergo surgery, a storm lasting eight hours set a new single-day snowfall record and travel was near-impossible. The family only had a matter of hours to get Michelle to the hospital for the organ to still be viable.

A helicopter was used to transport the family from their home to the airport, after hundreds of Louisville residents turned out to clear the snow so the medevac helicopter would have a place to land.

The helicopter took a three-year-old (not five-year-old, as portrayed in the film) Michelle to Standiford Field Airport, where she was then transported by private jet to Omaha, Nebraska.

Michelle became known as the “miracle snow baby”. Tragically, the real Michelle Schmitt died in May of 2021, when Ordinary Angels began filming. The one creative liberty the film did take is that the real Sharon was never an alcoholic.

Despite some changes, the real Schmitt family approved of the film adaptation, with Michelle’s sister Ashley telling WDRB they had met director Jon Gunn. She said: “He did a great job putting this movie together and having the right people play us.”

Commenting on the title, she added it was “perfect, because there [were] a lot of just ordinary angels that day that made it possible for us to get out of the city to get Michelle her transplant”.

Ordinary Angels is on Netflix