Antonio Banderas calls his 2017 heart attack 'best thing' that happened in his life

Antonio Banderas opened up in an interview with Page Six about his heart attack in 2017 and how it helped him reprioritise the important things in life.

He was only 56 at the time, and in otherwise excellent health. It came as a complete surprise. Now 62, athletically lean and as productive as he’s ever been, Banderas said “it’s one of the best things that’s happened in my life.”

“I realised that it 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,” he told the outlet.

The Spanish-born actor, 62, suffered a heart attack in January 2017. He credits his longtime girlfriend Nicole Kimpel for saving his life when she reacted quickly by giving him an aspirin.

“I was like, why am I worried about that if I’m going to die?” he added. “I knew always [that I was going to die], but now I know. I’ve seen it right here.”

He further added that the incident made enunciated the important things in his life; like his daughter Stella, whom he shares with Melanie Griffith, his friends, family and his “vocation as an actor” stayed and he began to detach from “things that I thought were important before but weren’t really.”

The actor talked about his heart attack in March of that year stating that “it wasn’t serious and hasn’t caused any damage.” However, he did undergo a procedure to insert three stents into his arteries. “It hasn’t been as dramatic as some have written,” he told press at the time.

In 2022, Banderas appeared as Santiago Moncada, the antagonist of the Uncharted film. In 2023, he is appearing in the Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny with Harrison Ford, Mads Mikkelsen and Toby Jones.

Moreover, Banderas will soon be heard reprising his role as the rapscallion feline in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, in which Puss discovers that he has burnt through eight of his nine lives and embarks on a quest to find the mythical last wish.