'I have to do a better job': Bob Odenkirk seeks work-life balance after near-fatal heart attack
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Bob Odenkirk has a fresh perspective on life after suffering from a near-fatal heart attack in 2021. The Emmy Award winner in a recent event spilled the beans on that particular health scare and how it still shapes his everyday life, "Whatever growth may come from my heart attack, I'm still in the middle of it." The 59-year-old actor adds, “I had to finish this season of Saul and do all these things that I'd signed up for, and I had a strange kind of blank slate quality to that experience. Literally, I couldn't remember any of it and even had a hard time making memories for weeks afterward."
During Paramount+’s Television Critics Association presentation on Monday, January 9, the star was asked what it was like to suffer from a severe heart attack. "Some people say it was like a mechanism, like a self-protective thing that your body does. But everyone has different experiences with those kinds of things," Odenkirk responded. "For me, I think it's still resonating in my life."
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The ‘Better Call Saul’ actor now focuses on bringing a sense of work-life balance into his life "I have to do a better job because we don't get to carry on forever. We just don't. I've got to make the right choices so I can feel like I'm doing the best I can with the time I have left for the things I love in this world." Odenkirk added, "I don't think I've figured it out yet, but I'm working on it."
The ‘Breaking Bad’ famed star suffered a massive heart attack on July 27, 2021, while he was shooting in New Mexico for the ninth episode of Better Call Saul’s sixth season, ‘Point and Shoot,’" reports People. In an interview with The New York Times, Odenkirk gave a detailed encounter with his near-death experience, "I went to play the Cubs game and ride my workout bike, and I just went down. Rhea said I started turning bluish-gray right away." The actor’s heart had plaque building up in 2018 but believes he could have received better medical advice then. He believes that the cardiac event happened because “one of those pieces of plaque broke up."
Looking back, Odenkirk told Today, about the life-changing event, "The epiphany was simply that my life is pretty damn great, and I should appreciate it and the people around me." Adding, "I think people do have epiphanies when they have a near-death experience, and oftentimes, it's 'I have to change something.' And I think my epiphany is I have to appreciate what I have because it's really great and I have really great people around me."