Brooke Shields: 'I feel lucky to be alive'

Looking back on her January accident that shattered a leg bone, launching a domino effect of surgeries and infection, Brooke Shields says she is grateful to have survived.

"I just feel so lucky to be alive," the actor, who turns 56 next week, told "Good Morning America" Monday, according to People magazine's transcription. After being flung from a balance board at a New York gym, Shields had emergency surgery to install a rod in her femur. The bone, she said, painfully "popped off" the rod the following morning, requiring additional surgery. Then almost immediately after her two-week hospitalization, where COVID-19 protocols prevented visits from family, she developed a staph infection in her arm, prompting more surgery.

"Once fear crept in, that's when I started to falter," she told "GMA" of that low point. "I don't think I've ever been more afraid, because I was helpless." Currently in physical therapy, "I can't even stand on my leg or go up a step. I need to relearn how to even walk. The feeling of helplessness is shocking."

She nonetheless has shared her recovery on social media, hoping to demonstrate that "stuff is going to happen in your life, and how you respond is going to define you, and adversity will reveal you. It won't make you as much as it will reveal you because you see who you are. You see what you're made up of."