Nicolas Winding Refn claims he "died" during surgery to fix a "leaking heart" and was brought back to life "like Frankenstein".
The Drive director, 55, revealed his health scare during the premiere of his new movie Her Private Hell at the Cannes Film Festival in France this week - telling the audience he was "dead" for 25 minutes while he was undergoing heart surgery in 2023.
According to Variety, he told the audience: "That changes you, when I was brought back by electricity. Now that I’m alive again, I only have 25 years left of my life to live. But I’m going to make damn use of that to live life to the fullest."
He later broke down in tears as he opened up about the experience in a press conference, telling reporters: "Before I died, I came to the end of my career. There was nothing for me to do. I had a leaking heart with the blood running backwards.
"My lungs were filling up with blood …suddenly I was told, I wouldn’t live. Two weeks later, I was operated on. Thank God, the surgeon was [just like] Tom Cruise because he could go through my body with all his abilities and he could fix my heart with this hands.
"I was put together with electricity like Frankenstein. I’m the Bionic Man.
"I realized I could start over again. How many guys get a second chance. I was going to use that chance."
Winding Refn explained what happened to him during an interview with Deadline.com revealing a last minute appointment with a heart specialist saved his life.
He said: "It was right after COVID ... I was in Milan working with Prada and I was getting very tired, like really, really tired, and then I thought I had pneumonia or something or exhaustion.
"And then when I came back to Copenhagen I went to see a doctor and he was like you don't have pneumonia ... but you have a strange sound on your heart.
"I'm like, yeah whatever, He's like I think you should see a heart specialist ...By accident there was an actual cancellation ... there was a specialist and then I went to see him and he's like you need to go to the hospital right now, like right away, you're basically dying. My lungs were filling up with blood and I was choking."
The moviemaker went on to reveal his heart surgery was filmed and he was given the take of the operation so he could see exactly how his heart was fixed.
