Brooke Shields recalls waking from a seizure with Bradley Cooper holding her hand
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Brooke Shields is opening up about a recent health scare — and the surprising face who came to her aid.
In a new interview with Glamour, the actress, model, and author, 58, revealed that she had "a full-blown grand mal seizure" just days before the opening of her one-woman show, Previously Owned by Brooke Shields, in New York.
"I was preparing for the show, and I was drinking so much water, and I didn't know I was low in sodium," Shields said. "I was waiting for an Uber. I get down to the bottom of the steps, and I start evidently looking weird, and [the people I was with] were like, 'Are you okay?'"
She walked to the street corner. "I'm like, 'Why am I out here?'" she recalled. "Then I walk into the restaurant L'Artusi, and I go to the sommelier, who had just taken an hour to watch my run-through. I go in, two women come up to me; I don't know them. Everything starts to go black. Then my hands drop to my side, and I go headfirst into the wall."
Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images; Steven Ferdman/Getty Images Brooke Shields and Bradley Cooper
The seizure left her "frothing at the mouth, totally blue, trying to swallow my tongue," Shields said. "The next thing I remember, I'm being loaded into an ambulance. I have oxygen on."
As she regained consciousness, she had a shock: "Bradley f---ing Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand."
Shields continued, "I didn't have a sense of humor. 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.'"
The American Hustle actor wound up at Shields' side through a winding game of telephone. The sommelier at the restaurant had attempted to reach Shields' husband, Chris Henchy. Instead, they reached an assistant. That assistant called another assistant, who called Cooper because he was in the area.
"His assistant called Bradley and said, 'Brooke's on the ground. Chris isn't around. Go get her,'" she said. "And he came, and somebody called the ambulance. And then it was like, I walked in with Jesus."
Representatives for Cooper didn't immediately respond to EW's request for comment Wednesday.
The doctors ultimately told Shields that low sodium caused the seizure. "I had had too much water," she told the magazine. "I flooded my system, and I drowned myself. And if you don't have enough sodium in your blood or urine or your body, you can have a seizure."
Shields said doctors kept asking if she had been limiting her salt intake because of the upcoming show. "And I said, 'You know what? I've had it with male doctors. I know you're all smart — smarter than I am in what you do. But let me just tell you something: I look younger when I'm bloated. If I'm bloated, people think I've had Botox.'"
She had been drinking too much water, she said, because she'd been singing "more than I've ever sung in my life" in addition to working on the show and a podcast.
Shields' New York show follows on the heels of Hulu's Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields documentary, which debuted earlier this year.
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