Brooke Shields Reveals How Bradley Cooper Helped Her Through 'Surreal' Seizure Incident
Brooke Shields says fellow actor Bradley Cooper went into full rescue mode after she had a recent health scare.
The Blue Lagoon star recalled her friend Bradley coming to her aid after she had a grand mal seizure at a restaurant in New York City before a performance of her one-woman show, Previously Owned by Brooke Shields, at Cafe Carlyle in September.
She explained in an interview with Glamour magazine that low-sodium levels had led to the serious episode, saying: “Everything starts to go black. Then my hands drop to my side and I go headfirst into the wall.”
Brooke said she was “frothing at the mouth, totally blue, trying to swallow my tongue” before being loaded into an ambulance and given oxygen, with her former co-star Bradley holding her hand.
“I didn’t have a sense of humour,” the Suddenly Susan star admitted. “I couldn’t really get any words out.”
The absurdity of the situation wasn’t lost on Brooke, however.
“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’,” she recalled.
The A Star Is Born filmmaker ended up on the scene after a sommelier at L’Artusi tried to reach Brooke’s husband, Chris Henchy.
In messages relayed by various assistants, Bradley, who was already close to L’Artusi, rushed to help.
Though the seizure seemed to come out of nowhere to Brooke, her doctors later told her that her body was reacting to dangerously low sodium levels.
“I flooded my system, and I drowned myself,” she told Glamour. “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.’”
Brooke and Bradley became friends when they starred in the horror-mystery The Midnight Meat Train in 2008.
Last year, the pair were seen out to lunch together in New York, where they were joined by his daughter Lea and Shields’ girls Rowan and Greer Henchy.