Antonio Banderas will never forget the day he could have lost his life and how his girlfriend was instrumental in saving her.
Famous actors have gone through all kinds of experiences. Being very successful artists does not prevent them from going through difficulties or traumatic moments similar to those we experience every day.
Antonio Banderas is one of the eminences of Hispanic cinema. Since his film debut in the 80s, his career has been a direct path to Hollywood stardom in films such as The Mask of Zorro, Interview with the Vampire, the Mini Spies Saga, and the voice of Puss in Boots in the Shrek universe, with his own saga.
Just like a good movie star, his love life has been in the spotlight for several years. Especially because of the relationship he had with Melanie Griffith from 1996 to 2014, which resulted in his daughter Stella.
Today, Antonio is happy, having had a happy and loving relationship with Nicole Kimpel since 2014, whom he met in May of that year in Cannes. They have been a stable couple without having to go through the altar.
To stay as attractive as he was at 30 at the age of 62, the actor performs a strict exercise routine, mainly based on the abdomen, to maintain his good health and prepare for new and challenging roles.
But it was precisely the intensity with which Banderas approached things that pushed his health to the limit more than once. He has even suffered from an arrhythmia, which, according to him, has been giving “a major beating to the potato (heart) in the last 37 years”, declaring himself at the same time to be a “workaholic”.
Between one thing and another, Antonio reached the biggest scare of his life on January 26, 2017, a date that is already marked as one that he will never forget. That day, the man from Malaga was exercising when, suddenly, he began to feel chest pains, and had to be taken to the hospital, since he had had a heart attack.
The interpreter of Pain and Glory would not have lived to tell the story if it had not been for the intervention of his partner, Nicole. She had opportunely bought pills the day before, so when the moment of the heart attack occurred, according to Banderas: “She put one of that aspirin inside my tongue and she saved my life.”
This event, without a doubt, marked a before and after for the life of the actor, who, far from remembering it as something negative, stated a few years later that “it was probably one of the best things that had happened to me in my life.”
According to Antonio, this is because the fact of having been so close to death allowed him to stop worrying about banal aspects and enjoy life to the fullest with what truly matters. “I realized that it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life because the things that weren't important and that I worried about every day were meaningless,” he said in the same interview.
In this way, the actor was able to leave aside everyday situations that can generate stress on a daily basis, which in the end may not be so important in the grand scheme of things, and the importance of enjoying and valuing each day as if it were the last. Because, indeed, it could be.
What Antonio Banderas experienced can serve as a reminder that every day is a chance to enjoy life. And that even the most difficult days can serve as a lesson to value what we have or as learning to continue becoming better people.
