Three months after the scary car crash that left Kevin Hart hospitalized with a long road to rehab, the actor and comedian says he’s “about 65 to 75 percent back to [his] physical self.” Hart, 40, opened up about his recovery to Ellen DeGeneres on her eponymous daytime talk show Wednesday, discussing how far he’s come since the accident, which required him to undergo emergency back surgery.
“I am about 65 to 75 percent back to my physical self,” Hart said. “Workouts are not full, I’m not lifting crazy weights, but I’m back to weighted workouts, agility, mobility, core workouts. I’m a little determined jackass.”
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He also said that immediately following the crash, which took place over Labor Day Weekend, he felt “helpless” and had no choice but to rely on his family — including wife Eniko Parrish and kids Hendrix, 12, Heaven, 14, and Kenzo Kash, 2.
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“I couldn’t wipe my a—!” he exclaimed. “You don’t realize that your back is connected to everything. So coming out of back surgery, everything changed. Because you’re kind of helpless. That’s when you get to see what really matters — who really matters. Life kind of hits you in a completely different way.”
“In that [hospital] room was me, my wife, my kids, my brother and my closest friends,” he continued. “My kids didn’t want to go to school. They stayed with me … they slept with me day in, day out. My wife was on rotation with my brother, her mom came in, my mother-in-law was there. And you go, ‘Wow. This is love. This is what real love and life is.’”
“The things that you think matter, you realize don’t. Because if you’re gonna have room, it’s not about your level of success, it’s not about how much money you have … It’s about those individuals and who you really mean the most to and who means the most to you,” the Jumanji: The Next Level star added.
He shared that he now has a “completely different look on life” following the crash. “I like saying, ‘OK, it’s time to rebuild,’” he said. “But we’re not rebuilding to get back to the old you, we’re rebuilding to be better and become a new you. It’s a thing with me and my mindset that I embrace and I think from the days in the hospital when I realized I couldn’t do for myself.”
One silver lining to come out of the crash was the downtime he was forced to spend at home. “I’ve never been home for more than eight to 10 days, ever. Never,” he said. “I’ve never been home for a consecutive period of 10 days straight.”
“Being home for that amount of time being happy,” he added. “I was sat down. I feel like God sat me down.”
During the crash, which occurred just before 1 a.m. on Sept. 1, Hart was a passenger in his 1970 Plymouth Barracuda when the driver, his friend Jared Black, lost control and crashed through wooden fencing and about 10 feet into a ditch on Mulholland Highway in Malibu.
Photo credit: Albert L. Ortega / Contributor / Getty
