An old album found in a thrift store is like a Hollywood time capsule

The story behind a mystery woman’s photo album filled with Hollywood celebrities

The woman was an entertainment journalist

Senior WriterLos Angeles

DECEMBER 27, 2021 10:28 PM ESTDEC 27, 2021, 10:28 PM EST

A lot of random things get donated to thrift stores, but in February 2020 the Belgian thrift shop Opnieuw & Co was determined to solve the mystery of a photo album that caught their attention. While they likely empty out the stray photos and put the albums on their shelves for resale, this album was unlike anything that had ever seen. Inside the large rose-covered album was photograph after photograph of a mystery woman posing with A-list Hollywood celebrities like Antonio Banderas, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, Bruce Willis, and more, sometime in the ’90s. The employees figured the album must have been donated by mistake and took it to Facebook to try and find out who the woman was. “We are looking for the owner of this photo book … It contains a lot of photos of a lady with all Hollywood stars. We think this may have been shared by accident and are therefore looking for the owner of this book,” they wrote on their page. They later found out the woman was Maria Snoeys-Lagler and were able to return the album to her heir. After some research people learned that Snoeys-Lageler was a former member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The journalist died at the age of 87 in 2016 and according to the Post, her daughter in California received the album. Take a look at the photos below and reminisce on 90’s Hollywood.