Antonio Banderas opened up about his 2017 heart attack in a new interview, sharing that the intense health scare prompted him to gain a new perspective and change his lifestyle.
"It was a knock at the door for me," the Oscar nominee said. "It could have been very bad.”
"I mean, if people ask me, 'So, how is it to have a heart attack?’ I don't know. I can tell you about my own,” Banderas added.
In 2017, the 63-year-old revealed he had a heart attack in March, two months after it occurred. He said the incident was not "serious and hasn't caused any damage" while speaking at a film festival in his hometown of Málaga, Spain.
However, he later divulged that he underwent heart surgery to have three stents placed in his arteries following the attack.
Banderas told the interviewer that he was lucky to have survived the medical emergency, as for many, there is "no second chance."
"And there are people who have a heart attack that they don't even know. Sleeping or whatever. And then they feel weird the next day, and they don't even know what happened," he explained. "In my case, it was a close call and advice to just really, really, really look at life in a different way. I was just going on the wrong path."
The Puss in Boots star’s heart attack came two years after he and ex-wife Melanie Griffith finalized their divorce. The couple, who share one daughter, had been married for 20 years before their heartbreaking split.
The director explained that he coped with the divorce by throwing himself into his career.
"I was coming out of my divorce and was confused," Banderas said of his feelings at the time. "I was just doing a lot of things. I'm protecting myself and finding sanctuary in work. Making movies one behind the other. It was crazy.”
"And, so, when I stopped, and I came out of this horse of adrenaline is when my heart said, ‘Pow, stop it.’ It's not the way. So, do what you want to do,” he added.
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"What I wanted to do is to go back to the beginning. Reset. My reset took me to my hometown. I bought a theater, which I have now, and I'm having a blast. Success is just do what you want to do in the way you want to do it. And that is exactly what I'm doing right now in my life. And I feel very healthy," he confessed.
Fox News Digital interviewed Banderas.
