Francis Ford Coppola's trip to Italy takes terrifying turn

Francis Ford Coppola was reportedly left ‘terrified’ as he was rushed to the hospital over fears he needed major heart surgery.

A source told Radar Online that the 86-year-old American filmmaker was recently under “sheer terror” when he was taken to a hospital in Italy owing to his post-traumatic stress caused by surviving polio as a child.

Coppola was rushed to the hospital on August 5 while he was in Rome and local media reported that it might have been a heart problem.

The Godfather director was in Italy to show his $120 million film Megalopolis at the Magna Grecia Film Festival in Calabria.

However, in a statement which was given a few hours after the news came out, he assured his fans about his wellbeing, saying he was “well” and had only gone through a routine procedure to update treatment for atrial fibrillation.

The insider shared, “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."

Notably, Coppola also revealed he was flooded with childhood memories of hospital gurneys in the hallways, children crying in iron lungs, and the night his legs stopped working.

The Apocalypse Now director was just nine years old when he got the disease, which is infectious and can cause paralysis.

In an old interview, he opened up about its onset as "a fever that just hits you for one night" but can be life-threatening.

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

“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,” Coppola shared at that time.