Living on borrowed time: Aimee Garcia says she died at age four
Aimee Garcia gets real about the day she says she died as a kid — and how that moment changed the way she sees the world.
The conversation started lightly — dog breeds, handwritten to-do lists — before Aimee Garcia shifted into the story that’s shaped her whole life. On the podcast Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, the Lucifer alum said she flatlined as a child during a bout of pneumonia and has treated every day since as extra time.
“I might have mentioned this on the podcast before, but I died when I was four years old,” Garcia said. “It ’s really informed who I am and how I look at life because to me, I’m on borrow time.”
Garcia said fluid in her lungs sent her to the hospital, where she recovered — but the room next door didn’t. She recalled that the little girl in the neighboring bed died and had no visitors, so Garcia’s father would pick the child up and sing to her. Garcia keeps a humpback whale photo on her wall to remind herself she’s a tiny dot in a very big world, and she tries not to sweat the small stuff.
Known to many as Ella Lopez, the upbeat forensic scientist on Lucifer, Garcia has also gone toe-to-toe with undead mayhem in the Dead Rising movies — but even those plotlines don’t top her real-life pivot point.
Why Dolly’s loss rattled her
When Dolly Parton died on August 25 at age 80, Garcia said the news kept her awake, thinking about mortality and the people she loves. She admitted she usually sleeps about 10 hours a night, but not that night.
Garcia carries a pocket-sized book of Parton quotes, owns a Dolly candle and called her dad as soon as she heard — only to learn he’d shed a few tears, too. She described Parton as a kind of north star she never met and praised the singer’s Imagination Library, which mails free books to young kids and was inspired by Parton’s father, who couldn’t read.
The actress said the loss made her wonder who she’d be without her parents — whom she calls her right and left arm — a reminder that her “borrowed time” outlook isn’t theoretical, it’s daily life.