Antonio Banderas believes his 2017 heart attack changed his life for the better. He shared these thoughts in an interview with The Times.
The five-time Golden Globe nominee said he has "never been so happy." This is nine years after he moved back to his home country, Spain. Before his heart attack, he split his time between the U.S. and the U.K. to focus on movies.
"Mine was a really serious warning. It changed the way I look at life," Banderas said about his heart attack. After recovering, he quit smoking and sold his private jet. He then moved back to Malaga, his hometown. He now lives there with his girlfriend, Nicole Kimpel. He also owns a theater called Teatro del Soho CaixaBank.
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Start Your News DetoxHe realized, "Faced with death, it made me look back and realize that I am, in fact, a theater actor."
A Shift in Priorities
Banderas, now 65, spoke about how his health made him rethink his life. He shared this in a 2022 interview with Page Six.
"I knew always [that I was going to die], but now I know. I’ve seen it right here," he said. He noted he had a procedure to put three stents in his arteries after the heart attack.
Today, Banderas still acts in movies. In 2024, he was in the thriller Babygirl with Nicole Kidman. Last year, he joined the cast of Tony, a biopic about Anthony Bourdain. In the film, he plays a Brazilian restaurateur who mentors a young Bourdain.
Most of Banderas's time is spent directing and producing plays and musicals at his theater. In April, the Teatro del Soho CaixaBank will host Malaga’s first international dance festival, Tiptoe.
Breaking Barriers in Hollywood
Before moving to the U.S. in the early 1990s, Banderas starred in several films by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. He quickly became famous globally with movies like Desperado and The Mask of Zorro.
In his interview with The Times, Banderas mentioned that American filmmakers initially told him he could only "play the bad guys." He said much of Hollywood was "off limits to Spaniards" at the time.
He recalled, "The problem was a few years later I had a mask, hat, sword and cape and the bad guy was Captain Love, who was blond and had blue eyes." He added, "Even more important is ‘Puss in Boots,’ because it’s for young kids. They see a cat that has a Spanish, even an Andalusian accent and he’s a good guy."
