Brooke Shields Recounts Grand Mal Seizure and Waking Up to Bradley Cooper in the Ambulance (Exclusive)

One week after being announced as one of Glamour Magazine‘s 2023 Women of the Year, Brooke Shields is talking about the bombshell she dropped about how Bradley Cooper came to the rescue after her recent seizure. 

In an interview with ET from the carpet of the New York City event, Shields, 58, joked about how she thought she might have died after the “full-blown grand mal seizure,” because of the Silver Linings Playbook actor, 48, being with her on the way to the hospital. 

“I’m okay but when I woke up in the ambulance and it was Bradley Cooper, I thought maybe I had died,” Shields joked with ET. 

While sitting down with Glamour for her Women of the Year interview, the model revealed that the “surreal” moment occurred on Sept. 7 as she was preparing for her one-woman show, Previously Owned, set to debut Sept. 12 at the famed Café Carlyle. In the midst of that preparation, Shields said her sodium levels were low and she ended up collapsing after everything “went black.” 

After an ambulance was called, those around her attempted to get in contact with her family members but were unsuccessful, resulting in them reaching out to Cooper. 

“I was very lucky — my husband [Chris Henchy] wasn’t there, my daughters were at school, and he [Cooper] was called and he was near,” Shields said.

When she finally woke up in the ambulance, she says the sight of the A Star Is Born actor made her question if she really lived through the incident. 

“I even thought about it and I was like, ‘I didn’t make it, did I?'” she said. “But it’s okay. It’s alright.” 

Shields says during the grand mal seizure, she started frothing at the mouth, turned “totally blue” and she was “trying to swallow” her tongue.

According to the Mayo Clinic, a grand mal seizure (now known as tonic-clonic seizure) causes a loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions. During a tonic-clonic seizure, the muscles become stiff, which causes a person to fall. Then the muscles alternately flex and relax.

“The next thing I remember, I’m being loaded into an ambulance. I have oxygen on,” she says. “And Bradley f**king Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand.”

Glamour reports that the sommelier at L’Artusi first tried to reach Shields’ husband, Henchy, “which ended up with an assistant reaching an assistant, who eventually called Bradley Cooper who was nearby.”

“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 shared with Glamour. 

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