TORONTO (AP) — Antonio Banderas says his emotional state from having a heart attack a few years ago influenced his award-winning performance in the Pedro Almoduvar film, “Pain and Glory.”

Banderas won the best actor trophy earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

In an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, Banderas told The Associated Press that drawing on personal experience has always helped him, but Almoduvar stressed that he especially embrace it for the performance.

“I had a heart attack two and a half years ago and it changed me in certain ways, yeah, and Pedro detected that, and he saw it, and he says, ‘You know, don’t hide this thing,'” he said.

Banderas says he understood the famed Spanish director’s message.

“I knew exactly what he was talking about, because after you have a heart attack you receive a lot of information on what life is all about that is very difficult to describe in words, but it just set up a new way of understanding life itself,” Banderas said.