Antonio Banderas says heart attack changed his life
‘The Mask of Zorro’ star was 56 when he was rushed to hospital in 2017 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.
Antonio, 62, told New York Post column PageSix: “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.
“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.”
