Cheered by a Fred Astaire film

We came across an NPR story about Fado singer Amalia Rodrigues, Portugese superstar.  Her comeback from despair really caught our ear:

Rodrigues did think about suicide once, when she was faced with a throat operation that might have altered her voice. But De Almeida says things didn't go quite as planned.

"Always with Amalia, things can turn funny at any moment," he says. "It's sort of a mixture of drama with comedy, really."

Rodrigues came to New York, armed with sleeping pills, but instead the Fred Astaire movies she watched in her hotel room cheered her up. After a successful operation, she returned to Lisbon's Coliseum to give what turned out to be one of her most legendary concerts.

Forbes June 30, 2008 comeback stories: Simon Cowell, Mark Wahlberg

Must read: Wahlberg, Cowell

Self-described "has-been" Teri Hatcher comes back with mega-hit "Desparate Housewives"

Teri Hatcher who took a seven-year break from the limelight to raise her daughter, and then snagged the lead in the prime-time "Desperate Housewives," thanked ABC for giving her "a second chance at a career when I couldn't have been a bigger has-been." She also came back from a sexual attack when young, helped convict the perpetrator, and tells her story in this memoir. Original post: November 15, 2005