Antonio Banderas is opening up about the many ways he believes his near-fatal heart attack changed his life for the better.
In a wide-ranging interview with the U.K. publication The Times, the five-time Golden Globe nominee says he’s “never been so happy” nine years after returning to his native Spain following his health scare. Prior to that, he’d been splitting his time between the U.S. and the U.K. in order to focus on film.
“Mine was a really serious warning. It changed the way I look at life,” he said of his 2017 heart attack. Upon recovery, Banderas said, he quit smoking, sold his private jet and returned to his hometown, Malaga, where he now lives with his girlfriend, Nicole Kimpel, and owns a theater, the Teatro del Soho CaixaBank.
“Faced with death, it made me look back and realize that I am, in fact, a theater actor,” he added.
Banderas, now 65, previously addressed how his health prompted him to reprioritize his life in a 2022 interview with the New York Post’s Page Six.
