Brooke Shields never expected to see this Hollywood star in the back of an ambulance with her.
The beloved Hallmark actress, best known for her roles as as as Charlotte Thornton on the series “When Calls the Heart” and Abby Knight in the “Flower Shop Mystery” movie series, recently recalled the surreal moment she opened her eyes to find a famous, Oscar-nominated star sitting beside her and holding her hand before being rushed to the hospital.
Shields Woke Up in an Ambulance With ‘American Sniper’ Star
“I wake up in the ambulance, and Bradley Cooper is holding my hand,” Shields explains in an interview on the Netflix cooking show, “I Changed My Mind With Dan Souza.”
“And I’m thinking, ‘I didn’t make it, huh?'” Shields jokes. “He’s like, ‘I’m going to go hospital with you, okay, the emergency room.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, Bradley Cooper. Sure.'”
She continues, “And he happens to live in the neighborhood, and I’ve known him for years. He’s a very… he’s the guy you want in an emergency, you know. But they don’t let people in the ambulances, I guess, unless you’re ‘American Sniper.’ We’re not related. But he’s ‘American Sniper.'”
Shields discussed this encounter in detail during an interview with Glamour, where the actress admitted that she suffered a seizure back in September 2023 while dining at L’Artusi in New York.
She recalled the terrifying moment that her “hands drop” to her side after walking into the restaurant and she goes “headfirst into the wall,” adding that 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,” Shields told the outlet, then she comes to and sees Cooper sitting next to her and holding her 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.'”
Shields & Cooper’s Friendship
GettyCooper discussed this same encounter in a separate interview from November 2023, where he reacted to Shields calling him her “guardian angel” at the 2023 Gotham Awards.
“I was happy to be in the right place at the right time,” Cooper told Extra at the time, per PEOPLE.
Though both actors tend to keep their lives out of the public eye, Shields and Cooper have been spotted having lunch dates with their families in the past. Back in October 2022, Cooper and his daughter Lea had lunch with Shields and her family in New York City, according to Daily Mail. This included Shields’ husband Chris Henchy along with their two daughters: Rowan and Grier.
Shields and Cooper previous starred in the 2008 horror film “The Midnight Meat Train.” The Ryûhei Kitamura film is based on Clive Barker’s 1984 short story of the same name. It is about “A photographer’s obsessive pursuit of dark subject matter leads him into the path of a serial killer who stalks late night commuters, ultimately butchering them in the most gruesome ways,” per the synopsis on IMDb. The cast also included Vinnie Jones, Leslie Bibb, Roger Bart, and Ted Raimi. Though the film received mixed reviews when it came out, Shields and Cooper have remained friends ever since.
That’s incredible! I’ve always been fascinated by stories like that—it’s amazing how unexpected these things can be.