EXCLUSIVE: Why Francis Ford Coppola, 86, Was 'Terrified' While Being Rushed to Hospital For Suspected Major Heart Surgery

In a statement issued hours after reports broke he had been rushed to hospital for suspected major cardiac surgery, he clarified he was "well" and had only undergone a routine procedure to update treatment for atrial fibrillation.

A source told us said: "The fear he felt as he was wheeled into the hospital in Italy reminded him of his experience with polio.

"That was almost more terrifying for him than his health scare."

Coppola has said he was overwhelmed by a wave of childhood memories – of gurneys in hospital hallways, crying children in iron lungs and the night his legs stopped working – when he was stricken with polio.

The director was just nine years old when he was struck by the disease – a highly infectious illness that causes paralysis in some cases.

Speaking in an earlier interview, he described its onset as "a fever that just hits you for one night," but whose damage can be life-altering.

"I remember that night. I was feverish, and they took me to a hospital ward," he said.

"It was so crammed with kids that there were gurneys piled up three and four high in the hallways because there were so many more kids than there were beds."

He added: "I remember the kids in the iron lungs, who you could see their faces on mirrors, and they were all crying for their parents. They didn't understand why they were suddenly in these steel cabinets."

Polio cases surged in the early 20th century, before mass immunization with the Salk and Sabin vaccines helped all but eradicate the disease by the late 1950s.

Coppola has admitted his experience in a crowded New York ward left a mark he carries to this day.

"I was looking around, and then when I tried to get out of bed, I fell on the floor, and I realized I couldn't walk," he said. "I couldn't get up."

He credited his father, composer Carmine Coppola, with finding alternative treatments that helped him recover from the disease and expressed admiration for the doctors who developed the vaccine.

"Both those doctors – Dr. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin – they donated the patents of their vaccines to the public," he said. "That's real heroism."

Coppola said he remains disturbed by the recent rise in anti-vaccine sentiment across the globe in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

"To see (polio) go away… it makes it so absurd, the idea that they would consider reversing course on vaccines now," he has said.

His brief hospital stay came just as Megalopolis, starring Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf, continues its controversial rollout following a mixed critical reception and modest box office earnings.

Despite this, Coppola has shown little concern.

Speaking on stage at the film festival in Calabria, he told the crowd: "Young people tell me the world is a mess, but I tell them there's no problem that humanity can't solve. We must build a great new future, and do it together."

He has spent much of the summer in Italy scouting new film locations and continues to live part of the year in Bernalda, the southern town where his grandfather Agostino was born. Coppola became an honorary citizen there in 1989.