Debby Ryan (Actress, ‘The Suite Life on Deck’)

"We were in Germany living in a village. The only Americans in town.  We went on lockdown. It was a scary time. Every country around us (over 90 countries) had people die that day. Some were dancing and celebrating in the streets, while others mourned in silence. We were told not to wear American clothes and not to drive places in our American car. For the longest time after that my brother and I couldn't speak English in public, mom looked over her shoulder and my dad worked or was on call 24/7/365 until we returned to Texas."

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PJ Harvey (Singer/ Songwriter)

On Sept. 11, 2001, P.J. Harvey was on a U.S. tour when she won her first of two Mercury prizes. She was told about the win while holed up in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., and said after her most recent accolade, "It's also good to be here this evening. When I last won 10 years ago on September 11, 2001. I was watching the Pentagon burning from my hotel window."

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Al Pacino (Actor, ‘The Godfather’)

“It was the most terrifying, the most heartbreaking day. I was on a plane the evening before it happened, September 10th. I was in Los Angeles, and all I wanted was to get back to my home . . . New York."

Source: Radio.com

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Robert De Niro (Actor, ‘Goodfellas’)

"I was in midtown heading downtown. It was interesting because I was going down Fifth Avenue, and everybody was standing on the left side of the street. It was very quiet. You could see the World Trade Center from there. I had an appointment uptown. My son called me – he lived actually a few blocks from the World Trade Center on Wall Street. That was the first plane. Then, when I was leaving where I was the second plane had hit. I was just trying to get home, and from my house you could see it from my window."

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Jane Rosenthal (Producer, ‘Meet the Parents’)

"I was a block and a half south of the first tower, on West Street. The difference between my being in front of the tower and not was my driver had stopped on a yellow light. For my driver to stop at a yellow light was a miracle. I was supposed to go I think on September 12 to a research screening of Showtime, which I never got to."

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Tom Bernard (Co-President and Co-Founder, Sony Pictures Classics)

"I was stuck in Toronto, trying to buy a movie. It was the Jill Sprecher film, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing. We were stuck there. I rented a car with U.S. plates, bought a Toronto Maple Leafs shirt, threw a hockey stick in the back. I heard about a secret passage on the other side of Lake Ontario through an Indian reservation, because they weren't letting anybody through in Buffalo. So I drove over there and I was the only car, all trucks, and I said 'Go Maple Leafs' and they waved me through and I drove home."

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Jonathan Kite (Actor, ‘2 Broke Girls’)

"I was walking into a computer lab in college and noticed that everyone was watching something on TV. A friend turned to me and said, 'They bombed the World Trade Center.' I just stood there not really knowing what to think. A split second later, my mind came back to reality and I moved in to watch the coverage on the news."

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Roseanne Cash (Singer/ Songwriter)

"My daughter Carrie was in seventh grade, and I took her to school in a taxi because there was a meeting that morning. [At the school], I went into the cafeteria and she went up to her classroom. At about 8:45, I heard a rumble overhead. The plane went right over the school, and shook the building.

Tom Hardy (Actor, ‘Inception’)

"I was at a wig-fitting. I was doing a French Foreign Legion film, and I was going out to North Africa, Morocco. We'd just done 'Black Hawk Down,' and they shelved that immediately… Immediately, it was a life-changing event. I have friends who serve, I have a lot of friends in special forces, I have very, very close friends who deal in very serious operations all over the Middle East that were affected post-9/11 … I'm still really thrown by the loss and the amount of people on that day, and that whole situation, to be honest."

Gus Van Sant (Director, ‘Good Will Hunting’)

"I was living on Canal Street and out my window I could see the towers, and I heard an explosion and eventually realized that one of them was on fire. Our office was even closer, so we were eight blocks away on the roof looking at the towers falling. And we evacuated away from the dust and smoke that was coming our way. I was sort of typical of some reactions where I wasn't really aware of how big a moment it was, which was something that happened with other people in the Tribeca area and Wall Street area. Some people continued working."

Source: Emirates247.com

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Matt Damon (Actor, ‘Contagion’)

“I lived in lower Manhattan at the time. So I just remember walking out of my apartment and seeing it and then going back in and watching CNN ’cause I was so hungry for information, trying to figure out what’s going on."

Source: Radio.com

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Jill Zarin (Reality star, ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’)

"I was at home in New York City at my Upper East Side apartment when I received a phone call from a friend with the news that a plane hit the World Trade Center. My heart sank as I went to my window and saw the smoke rising from the building. Moments later, I saw the second plane hit and my husband and I were devastated and scared because at that point we realized that it was terrorism."

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Sir Paul McCartney (Singer/ Songwriter)

"I was on my way back to England, and we were at JFK on the tarmac, and the pilot just suddenly said, 'We can't take off. We're going to have to go back to base.' And out of the window on the right-hand side of the airplane, you could see the twin towers. You could see one plume of smoke, and then you could see two shortly thereafter."

Source: Emirates247.com

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DJ Pauly Delvecchio (Reality star, “Jersey Shore”)

"It’s a sad day for me. I remember when it happened, to a tee. I was working at a [Honda] dealership at the time. It’s sad that so many people lost their family members. I sit back and I take that day and remember how lucky we all are to be here. I like to contact my family, my mother, my father, and just get them on the phone wherever I am and talk to them. Life is short, and you never know what can really happen."

Sheila Nevins (President, Documentary Films, HBO)

"I was sitting in my office at HBO, and a friend of mine in Connecticut called me and said, 'Turn on your TV.' And I turned on the TV and I could see the smoke from 42nd and Sixth Avenue… We all left the building – we were told to leave the building, because we were in such close proximity to the Empire State [Building]. And then we all walked from 42nd Street to my apartment on 86th Street… We watched television all day long, just kept CNN on. Then we decided to make a film about the New Yorkers, because everybody we knew who didn't go home had run down with a camera, they were professional documentary makers or just our neighbors, or doorman, everybody had portable cameras. So we then constructed our film on 9/11."

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Martin Scorsese (Producer/ Director, ‘Cape Fear’)

"I was at home on 62nd street here on the east side. I was preparing to go to Brigitte Lacombe’s photographic event. She had an exhibition that day. And when we woke up, this occurred."

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Alex McCord (‘The Real Housewives of New York City’)

"My husband Simon had opened the Hotel Chandler as GM one week before and we'd been staying there as he was working around the clock. That morning I slept in to be rested for an audition for 'As The World Turns,' when Simon called to tell me to turn on the news as a 'small plane' had hit the World Trade Center. I did, while calling my mother in Dallas — as we stood on the phone in front of TVs, 1400 miles apart, the second plane hit.  Almost simultaneously we said that there was no way it was an accident."

Brent Ridge & Josh Kilmer-Purcell (‘The Fabulous Beekman Boys’)

"We were in the South of France watching the news coverage on a TV in a small brasserie. It was incredible to see the breadth of emotions toward America through the eyes and ears of another country."

Eamonn Bowles (President, Magnolia Pictures)

"I was in a 9 o’clock screening in Toronto— I think it was a French film— and I walked out and saw John Sloss on the street and I went, 'Why so glum, chum?' Kind of snappy. And he goes, 'You didn’t hear? Go watch T.V. A plane’s hit the World Trade Center.' And I’m like, 'What?' I just ran back to the hotel room and watched. The second tower had just fallen at that point."

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Dylan Kidd (Director, ‘Rodger Dodger’)

"I was actually at a lab. I was at Technicolor with my EP. We were looking at a test because we were trying to figure out what stock to use. Right before we went into the screening room somebody mentioned that a plane had hit one of the towers, and we did what everybody did, we assumed it was a little plane or something. We went into the dark, and 45 minutes later we walked out and the world was ending. It was really crazy."

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