Altman reveals why he’s young at heart

Legendary film director Robert Altman kept his heart transplant secret for nearly a decade for fear that the news would hurt his ability to continue making movies. But when he finally decided to talk about it, he picked the biggest forum he could find.

Altman, 81, who has a record-tying five nominations for best director and has never won an Oscar, was honored with a lifetime achievement award at Sunday’s Academy Awards. He appeared poised to leave the microphone after his acceptance speech when he revealed his medical condition, almost as an afterthought.

“Oh, one more thing,” Altman said. “I’m here, I think, under kind of false pretenses.... Ten years ago, 11 years ago, I had a heart transplant. A total heart transplant. I got the heart of, I think, a young woman who was about in her late 30s. And so, by that kind of calculation, you may be giving me this award too early -- because I think I’ve got about 40 years left on it. And I intend to use it. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

Backstage, the director told reporters that he kept the transplant secret, fearing that “maybe no one would hire me again. You know, there’s such a stigma about heart transplants, and there’s a lot of us out there.”

Altman’s five nominations, for “MASH,” “Nashville,” “The Player,” “Short Cuts” and “Gosford Park,” put him in the company of other filmmaking greats -- Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese among them -- who’ve never earned a directing statuette.

In a career stretching to nearly 40 movies, Altman has resisted extensive pre-production planning, allowed dialogue to naturally overlap and revised nearly every archetypal genre.

“I look at it as a nod to all of my films. To me, I’ve just made one long film,” he said of the honor.