The Eerie Prediction About James Dean’s Death That Came True

Lauren Novak September 30, 2025

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, James Dean, 1955 — Everett Collection

Alec Guinness could have saved James Dean‘s life. Dean died far too young at the age of 24 in a fatal car crash on September 30, 1955. Just a week before his untimely death, Guinness ran into Dean outside a restaurant in Hollywood and asked if Guinness could get him in. Before they entered the restaurant, Dean wanted to show off his new car, a Porsche 550 Spyder.

Guinness recalled in a 1977 interview on the BBC’s Parkinson Talk Show that he asked Dean just how fast the iconic Porsche would go and Dean replied that it could go up to 150 mph.

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“I said, ‘Have you driven it?’ and he said, ‘No. I have never been in it at all,’” Guinness recalled. “And some strange thing came over me. Some almost different voice and I said, ‘Look, I won’t join your table unless you want me to, but I must say something: Please do not get into that car, because if you do’ — and I looked at my watch — and I said, ‘if you get into that car at all, it’s now Thursday (Friday, actually), 10 o’clock at night and by 10 o’clock at night next Thursday, you’ll be dead if you get into that car.’”

“And he was dead the following Thursday afternoon in that car,” added Guinness. “It was one of those odd things. It was a very, very odd, spooky experience. I liked him very much, too. I would have loved to have known him more.”