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Antonio Banderas credits his girlfriend Nicole Kimpel with having saved his life. The Spanish actor, 59, dropped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Halloween wearing his original Zorro costume. While on the ABC talk show, the dad of one opened up about the heart attack he suffered back in January.
"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," he recalled. "[Nicole] 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."
"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," Antonio continued. "So I had a second chance, and some stuff changed in my life, since then."
Prior to his heart attack, Antonio admitted that he was “living life in a not nice way.” He explained, “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. I was very lucky, after all." Following the incident, the Desperado star underwent a procedure to place three stents in his arteries, AP News reported in March.
Since his health scare earlier this year, the Zorro actor’s priorities have changed. Antonio now places greater emphasis on the things that matter, like his career and loved ones, including daughter Stella Banderas . "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."