Antonio Banderas has been treasuring every moment with his family and friends since a heart attack in 2017 “changed [his] life entirely.”

The actor spoke about that health scare on Tuesday's episode of This Morning where he reflected on some of the lessons he learned from that scary experience. “It made me appreciate life in a completely different way and in a much more powerful way,” he told the morning show. “It changed my life entirely and completely for good.” Six years ago, Banderas was rushed to the hospital after suffering chest pains while exercising. He later discovered he had had a heart attack. In March of that year, he told Spanish journalists that the event wasn't serious and hadn’t caused any serious damage, although he did undergo a procedure to insert three stents into his arteries. “It hasn’t been as dramatic as some have written,” he said, crediting his longtime girlfriend Nicole Kimpel with saving his life by reacting quickly and giving him an aspirin.

Speaking with This Morning, Banderas added the experience has also made him wish he was more appreciative of his life when he was younger. “After Covid, kids were asking themselves, 'Why can't we go to school?' It was there in the environment. We took a chance to reflect,” he said. “Kids, they know more than we think. They understand and it's good to reflect with them on these issues. What they are learning at the end is to praise life, how wonderful life is. Life is a beautiful thing, we have only one and we have to take care of it.”

These recent quotes echo a similar sentiment the Puss in Boots star expressed to Page Six in December of last year regarding his heart attack. “I realized that it probably was one of the best things that ever happened in my life because the things that were not important and I was worried every day about them, meaningless,” he said. “I was like, ‘Why am I worried about that if I’m going to die?’ I knew always [that I was going to die], but now I know. I’ve seen it right here.” He added that it helped him treasure the most important things in his life, like his daughter Stella, his friends, his family, and his “vocation as an actor,” and detach from “things that I thought were important before but weren’t really.” He noted that while he's also had plenty of down moments in his life, they don’t last that long as he’s “a very positive person by nature. My depressions last five minutes, I bounce back immediately.”