You may not know it by the tone of many of the articles I've written on here, but I am an inherently optimistic person. I really am. No matter how many times I am disappointed in the results of humanity's action, fate is usually kind enough to present me with incredible possibilities in the realm of human kindness.

Let's take the saddest thing possible... sick children. I mean kids staying in the hospital for weeks at a time under the influence of genetic mishaps or tragic accidents. You'll be hard-pressed to find a group of people more in need of cheering up, in addition to being an audience that is harder to please than most. A 3DS isn't going to cut it in this case, so you'll need to up the ante.

That's when some celebrities step in to turn a hospital stay into something that will be the envy of their more well peers for years and years to come. Today, we salute the entertainment elite that gave back a little in the best way possible.

In 2008, Johnny Depp was called away from the set of Sweeney Todd when his nine-year-old daughter Lily-Rose went into apparent kidney failure as a result of an E.coli poisoning incident. Depp and his then-partner Vanessa Paradis stood by like any worried set of parents as the staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital nursed their child back to full recovery. A grateful Depp donated more than a million dollars to the hospital as thanks, but he wasn't done.

In 2009, he was back in London doing press junkets for Public Enemies when he had a brilliant idea. Dressed in full costume as Captain Jack Sparrow he dropped by the children's ward once more, and spent the evening reading bedtime stories to enthralled youngsters. It's not the last time he did something like that, either. In response to a fan letter from a young girl named Beatrice Delap asking Captain Jack to visit the school. Depp was once again down, and swept into Meridian Primary School in 210 virtually unannounced to take picture with Delap and her friends.