The 'Mask of Zorro' actor explains why his brush with death when he had a heart attack in 2017 was 'one of the best things' that's ever happened in his life.
- Dec 19, 2022
AceShowbiz - Antonio Banderas calls having a heart attack "one of the best things" that's ever happened to him. In 2017 when he was 56, "The Mask of Zorro" star was rushed to hospital after suffering a cardiac event and he later underwent surgery to have three stents implanted into his coronary arteries - and he now credits his brush with death with giving him the chance to change his life for the better.
"I realised that it [the heart attack] probably was one of the best things that ever happened in my life because the things that were not important and I was worried every day about them, meaningless," Antonio, 62, told New York Post column Page Six. "I was like, 'why am I worried about that if I'm going to die?' I knew always [that I was going to die], but now I know. I've seen it right here."
He went on to explain he prioritised his family and friends as well as his love of acting, but started to detach from "things that I thought were important before but weren't really."
The actor previously credited his quick-thinking girlfriend Nicole Kimpel saved his life by giving him an aspirin when he started to have symptoms. During an appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", he explained, "My girlfriend, she had a headache and we didn't have anything in the house."
"So she went out to buy something, a painkiller or whatever. She bought this aspirin, which is the only thing that she found and she found the maximum one, I think it was five milligrams. The next morning, when I started having the symptoms and I clearly knew what was going on, she put one of those aspirins inside of my tongue and that saved my life. Yeah. So I had a second chance."
