Antonio Banderas Reveals His Girlfriend Saved His Life During Heart Attack

Antonio Banderas opened up about suffering a heart attack on recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, revealing his longtime girlfriend, Nicole Kimpel, actually saved his life. As the 59-year-old actor tells it, if Kimpel had not suffered a terrible headache the night before his heart attack he may not have survived.

"I was living life in a not nice way. I'm not a drinker. I was a smoker, which was probably one of the most stupid things I have ever done in my whole life," Banderas said of his lifestyle pre-heart attack. "I was very lucky, after all."

"The night before that I had this event, my girlfriend, she had a headache and we didn't have anything in the house. So she went out to buy something, a pain killer or whatever," Banderas continued. "She bought this aspirin, which is the only thing that she found and she found the maximum one, I think it was five milligrams. She got some water, some other stuff, and at the time that she was at the cashier to pay the girl that was working there, she said, 'You just dropped that thing over there,' and it was the aspirin." 

For those who don't know, aspirin can help keep some heart attack symptoms temporarily at bay. Aspirin slows the blood's clotting action by reducing the clumping of platelets, according to HealthLink British Columbia. "The next morning, when I started having the symptoms and I clearly knew what was going on, she put one of those aspirins inside of my tongue and that saved my life," the actor revealed.

With a new lease on life, Banderas no longer sweats the small stuff. "So I had a second chance, and some stuff changed in my life, since then," Banderas added. "Things that I gave a lot of importance to stopped being important," he said. "You put attention to the real things. My daughter is the real thing, my friends, my family, and my vocation as an actor. In a way, this is very, it's probably stupid to say this, but it's probably one of the best things that happened in my life."

Photo: Getty