Brooke Shields revealed in a new interview with Glamour that she suffered a seizure in September and none other than Bradley Cooper unexpectedly swooped in to support her. The incident occurred at a restaurant in New York City while Shields was waiting to be seated at a table.
“Two women come up to me; I don’t know them. Everything starts to go black,” Shields remembered. “Then my hands drop to my side and I go headfirst into the wall. I start having a grand mal seizure… Frothing at the mouth, totally blue, trying to swallow my tongue.”
“The next thing I remember, I’m being loaded into an ambulance. I have oxygen on. And Bradley fucking Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand,” Shields continued. “I couldn’t really get any words out. But I thought to myself, ‘This is what death must be like.’ You wake up and Bradley Cooper’s going, ‘I’m going to go to the hospital with you, Brooke,’ and he’s holding my hand. And I’m looking at my hand, I’m looking at Bradley Cooper’s hand in my hand, and I’m like, ‘This is odd and surreal.’”
Popular on Variety
It turns out the restaurant originally tried to contact Shields’ husband, Chris Henchy, but he did not initially respond. Multiple assistants got involved and Cooper ended up being contacted as he happened to be in the nearby area.
“His assistant called Bradley and said, ‘Brooke’s on the ground. Chris isn’t around. Go get her,’” Shields said. “And he came and somebody called the ambulance. And then it was like, I walked in with Jesus.”
According to Shields, the seizure was triggered by low sodium and because she “drank too much water.”
“I flooded my system and I drowned myself,” Shields said. “And if you don’t have enough sodium in your blood or urine or your body, you can have a seizure. So as a 58-year-old woman, I’m not limiting my salt, OK? Stop trying to make me a crazy actress or a female that doesn’t know what the fucking they’re doing. I was drinking too much water because I felt dehydrated because I was singing more than I’ve ever sung in my life and doing a show and a podcast. So they were just like, ‘Eat potato chips every day.’”
The incident occurred just a few days after Cooper’s latest project, “Maestro,” world premiered to acclaim and instant Oscar buzz at the Venice Film Festival. Cooper did not attend the event due to the strikes.
Read Shields’ full interview with Glamour magazine here.
