Jamie Dornan found himself hospitalized due to heart attack symptoms caused by toxic caterpillars during a trip to Portugal, according to his friend.
Gordon Smart was a guest on BBC’s The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected podcast, and spoke about his and the Fifty Shades of Grey actor’s apparent health scare after a trip to a golf resort. Smart said he initially attributed their health issues to excessive drinking the night before. However, both he and Dornan were astonished to learn that their symptoms were possibly the result of an encounter with processionary caterpillars, known for their toxicity.
The Pine processionary moth caterpillars possess tiny hairs containing an irritating protein, causing painful skin, eye, and throat irritations, according to Forest Research.
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On the podcast, Smart described feeling a “tingling in his left hand and tickling in his left arm” on the first day of their vacation, initially fearing it was the onset of a heart attack.
“Now, I’m a fairly healthy guy but once you start thinking you’re having a heart attack, you’re pretty sure that you’re convincing yourself that you are having one,” Smart said on the podcast, noting that he was hospitalized before Dornan.
After receiving medical attention, the Scottish broadcaster and former journalist said he returned to his hotel to discover Dornan hooked up to medical equipment. Smart said the actor was also experiencing numbness in his limbs and was taken away in an ambulance.
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“Jamie said, ‘Dear me. Gordon, about 20 minutes after you left, my left arm went numb, my left leg went numb, my right leg went numb, and I found myself in the back of an ambulance,'” Smart recalled. “Anyway, as he left the hospital, the paramedics asked them for a selfie, which is really what you want when you’re being wheeled out of a hospital room.”
The following week, Smart said a doctor informed him that his and Dornan’s symptoms might be linked to toxic caterpillars found on golf courses in southern Portugal, known to harm dogs and cause heart attacks in men in their 40s.
“It turns out we’d brushed up against hairy processionary caterpillars and have been very lucky to come out of that one alive,” he shared. “The good news is it wasn’t a caffeine overdose, it wasn’t a hangover — it was a poisonous, toxic caterpillar.”
ET has reached out to Dornan’s reps for further comment on his Smart’s story.
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