Brooke Shields says Bradley Cooper came to her aid after suffering grand mal seizure: 'odd and surreal'
Brooke Shields revealed she suffered from a grand mal seizure this year and received help from an unexpected hero.
In her Glamour 2023 Women of the Year interview, Shields shared that she experienced a grand mal seizure before a performance of her one-woman show "Previously Owned by Brooke Shields," at New York City’s Café Carlyle.
"I was preparing for the show, and I was drinking so much water, and I didn’t know I was low in sodium. 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 recalled.
Shields remembered she left the venue for "no reason at all. I’m like, ‘Why am I out here?’"
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"I go in, two women come up to me; I don’t know them. Everything starts to go black," she continued. "Then my hands drop to my side and I go headfirst into the wall."
The 58-year-old actress described having a grand mal seizure, saying she was, "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."
When she awoke in the ambulance, she realized, "Bradley f---ing Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand."
The "Blue Lagoon" star admitted the experience was "surreal" and could barely wrap her head around the actor’s presence.
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"I didn’t have a sense of humor. I couldn’t really get any words out," she told Glamour. "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.’"
Cooper was called after the sommelier at the restaurant first tried to reach Shields’ husband, Chris Henchy, and through an assistant reaching out to another assistant, he was called and happened to be nearby.
"His assistant called Bradley and said, ‘Brooke’s on the ground. Chris isn’t around. Go get her.’ And he came, and somebody called the ambulance. And then it was like, I walked in with Jesus."
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Shields and Cooper starred in the 2008 film "Midnight Meat Train" and have apparently remained friendly ever since.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Shields and Cooper, but neither responded immediately to a request for comment.
Once at the hospital, Shield told Glamour that doctors thought her brain was seizing, and they conducted EEGs and hooked her up to IVs before putting her in the ICU, where she said she caught bronchitis.
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The doctors concluded that Shields "had had too much water. 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."
The "Suddenly Susan" star also experienced frustration with what she felt were assumptions her doctors made about her health choices.
"And then male doctors kept asking me if I was limiting my salt. 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 said.
"So as a 58-year-old woman, I’m not limiting my salt, okay? Stop trying to make me a crazy actress or a female that doesn’t know what the f--- 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."
To aid in her salt intake, Shield said "they were just like, ‘Eat potato chips every day.’"