David Hollis, a self-help author, the former president of worldwide distribution for Disney and the ex-husband of Girl Wash Your Face author Rachel Hollis, passed away on Saturday at the age of 47.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a representative for Hollis said he died peacefully Saturday night at his home in Austin, Texas. No cause of death was given, though Hollis was recently hospitalized for heart problems.
"We are devastated," Rachel Hollis wrote in a Tuesday Instagram post. "I have no words, and my heart is too broken to find them. Please wrap the kids in prayers as we try and navigate through the unthinkable."
As reported by The Christian Post, Hollis led Disney's theatrical distribution from 2011 to 2018 and helped relaunch the Star Wars franchise. He also helped launch other hit films such as Frozen, Black Panther and The Avengers series.
After leaving Disney, Hollis moved to Texas with his family to help run Chic Media alongside his then-wife Rachel.
The couple divorced in 2020 after 16 years of marriage. They have four children.
In a 2021 interview with The Christian Post, Hollis shared how his divorce brought him closer to God.
"2020 was the hardest year of my life, outpacing any other year by a factor of 100," he told The Christian Post at the time. "But it was also the best. As I look back, 18 months removed from the hardest things that I've ever been through — I don't want to relive them, but I can sit here today with a wild amount of gratitude for having gone through them, because of the way that it brought me to my knees and drew me closer to God."
"Telling people that you have faith is something that is easy until you go through really, really hard things," he said. "I realized how much stronger my faith could be because it had been tested."
He also cited James 4:8, which reads, in part, "Come near to God and He will come near to you."
"I found myself, because of the conditions around me, closer to God than I'd ever been," Hollis said. "And in that, I developed faith that the things that I would need in this journey would show up when I needed them. When you do that, you find God in unexpected places."
He also stressed to those needing encouragement that "God put you here for a very, very specific reason. He's given you the tools to achieve something greater than you can even believe if you can believe it yourself."
"Part of that is understanding that you are a limited edition, one of one, there is no one like you, with your wiring, with the way you think or feel, the way you love, the experiences that you've had," he continued.
"There is an opportunity to step closer to that purpose that only you can live out on this Earth. … I want to encourage people to step closer every day to that purpose and find exactly where God wants them to be."
Hollis is the author of two self-help books, Get Out of Your Own Way and Built Through Courage: Face Your Fears to Live the Life You Were Meant For. He also wrote a children's book and hosted the "Rise Together" podcast.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Seventy Four
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
