How Purell Became the Brand That's Kept Our Flu-Obsessed Fears at Bay

And to think, it was a flop at first

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In the Steven Soderbergh movie Contagion, a cook in Macau who's handled bad meat shakes hands with a traveling businesswoman named Beth Emhoff (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), who flies home and touches off a global pandemic that sickens and kills millions.

Photo: Nick Ferrari

That movie scared a lot of people—including Matt Damon, who played Mitch Emhoff, Patient Zero's husband. "There's a lot of Purell on the set," Damon laughed (nervously) in a 2011 interview.

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