Antonio Banderas Reveals What He Did After Having a Heart Attack: 'I Don't Want to Die Thinking I Should Have Done That'

Antonio Banderas is opening up about one of his big decisions after suffering a heart attack in 2017.

The 59-year-old Pain and Glory actor spoke out in an interview for The Big Ticket, Variety and iHeart’s movie podcast.

During the interview, he revealed that opening his new theater company, the Teatro del Soho CaixaBank in Málaga, Spain – which includes a school for 600 students – came to him directly after his health scare.

“I came [to] the conclusion that I had to do the things that I want to do, that I don’t want to die thinking, ‘I should have done that or I should have said that.’ Money in the bank became kind of a very Machiavellian intellectual thing,” he revealed.

“When you get close to death, only the essential things remain. Things that you thought at some point that were very important, they disappear,” he went on to say.

“Movies became an enormous accident in my career, an accident of over 112 movies, but the thing that I fell in love with in my profession is the theater, seeing actors on the stage, a group of people just telling stories to another group of people. I just love that ritual. There was something there, very specific, very beautiful that has to do with civilization, with the possibility of these people reflecting in front of others about ourselves. You can make them laugh, you can make them cry, you can go to many different places,” he said of his love for theater.

Listen to the full conversation with Antonio Banderas inside…

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