Antonio Banderas: My heart attack was the best thing
Antonio Banderas has reflected on his near-fatal heart attack.
Antonio Banderas' heart attack is the "best thing" to have happened to him.
The 65-year-old actor suffered a heart attack back in 2017 - but that scare prompted him to embrace a new lifestyle, including quitting smoking and relocating to Malaga in Spain.
The movie star told People: "You always have in your mind that you’re going to die.
"But then when you have it so close, it’s an unbelievably clear reminder of how stupid you are losing time over things that don’t deserve to be in your life."
Antonio explained that the health scare prompted a long-overdue change.
He said: "My heart attack was the best thing that ever happened in my life. It was like somebody put glasses on me so I could see the reality that I didn’t see before."
Antonio lived in the US for decades and established himself as a star in Hollywood. But he's now loving life in Malaga, the city of his birth.
He shared: "Those were beautiful, exciting years [in Los Angeles], but I always had this sense of provisionality, that it was not going to last my whole life. I knew I was not supposed to be in Malibu, but in Malaga.
"People live like they are not going to die. They collect things. I don’t want to collect anything. The only thing that I am interested in now is in the experience of living."
Earlier this year, Antonio described his heart attack as a "really serious warning".
The film star told The Times newspaper: "Mine was a really serious warning. It changed the way I look at life.
"Faced with death, it made me look back and realise that I am, in fact, a theatre actor. I have never been so happy."
Antonio also joked that when he does die, he'll return to "haunt [his] theatre".
The actor quipped: "A few months before [my father] died we were watching the procession of the Holy Sepulchre pass by on the night of Good Friday and suddenly, without looking at me, he said, ‘I think there’s nothing. I think there’s nothing after death.’ My father, who was very Catholic, said that.
"I will come back as a ghost. To haunt my theatre."
