12 Movies That Cast MAJOR Actors (Just To Die)

Steven Soderbergh's 2011 viral outbreak thriller had been largely forgotten until our present circumstances suddenly had people declaring it the most prescient movie of our time.

On its release, however, Contagion drew more interest for its impressively starry ensemble than its ability to predict a realistic global pandemic.

In a cast that included Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law, it was Gwyneth Paltrow as an ordinary suburbanite who was our introductory character. It was through her eyes that we saw the origins of the outbreak and its arrival in America.

The Oscar-winning Iron Man star seemed positioned as the ordinary everywoman audience surrogate in Contagion's world of doctors, scientists and conspiracy theorists.

But, once she has introduced the virus, Paltrow's role in Contagion is complete. All she has to do is die to prove how deadly the virus is and then the movie can begin in earnest. Her whole part is really just a prologue. It turns out that Damon as her husband is the real ordinary everyman character of the ensemble.

Like others on this list, Paltrow's death scene isn't her final moment of the movie. There's time for a flashback. In fact, although she has no part to play in the main body of the film, Paltrow does get to bookend it. She returns for Contagion's final scene, which shows how an infected bat led to Patient Zero and to her being the first infected American.