Actor Jamie Dornan Had Life-Threatening Run-In With Toxic Caterpillars

A recent golf trip in Portugal took a turn for the worse for actor Jamie Dornan and a trio of friends, leaving the Fifty Shades of Grey actor hospitalized with what he believed to have been heart attack symptoms. But as it turns out, the culprit was a species of toxic caterpillar known for killing dogs and other small animals.

Dornan’s friend Gordon Smart, who was also on the trip, recounted the ordeal on BBC’s The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected podcast earlier this month. And if being hospitalized over a run-in with a toxic caterpillar isn’t unexpected, we don’t know what is. As Smart recalled, the group’s day had gotten off to a slow enough start as it was after imbibing a few too many bottles of wine and espresso martinis the night before.

“The next day, we played golf, we were all absolutely dreadful,” Smart explained. “And I started to feel a tingling in my left hand, tingling in my left arm, I’d been the son of a [general practitioner], this is normally the sign of the start 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,” he continued. After consulting with an on-site nurse who noted that his heart rate was elevated, Smart was rushed to a hospital, where doctors confirmed that something wasn’t right.

“As I was lying there, one of the other lads I was with went past in a hospital bed with doctors shouting the same questions to him,” he said. “And I thought, that’s not a good sign that he’s in the same state as me.”

While hospitalized, Smart phoned his father, who suggested that he may have had a caffeine overdose from too many espresso martinis. Eventually, doctors sent him on his way, but when he got back to the house, his friends weren’t there. At this point, he revealed that Jamie Dornan was one of the friends on the trip. Apparently, about 20 minutes after he began experiencing symptoms, Dornan likewise began to lose feeling in his extremities.

“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 continued. “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.”

Fast forward to about a week after they got back, and Smart received a phone call from the doctor, who asked if their group had come into contact with any caterpillars on the golf course. The doctor then sent him a link to an article about processionary caterpillars, a species of toxic caterpillar found in Portugal.

“And it turns out that there are caterpillars on golf courses in the south of Portugal that have been killing people’s dogs and giving men in their 40s heart attacks,” he explained. “It turns out we’d brushed up against hairy processionary caterpillars and have been very lucky to come out of that one alive.”

“So there’s my story. The good news is it wasn’t a caffeine overdose, it wasn’t a hangover,” he added. “It was a poisonous, toxic caterpillar.”

Though Dornan has not publicly commented on the ordeal, one would have to imagine that he’s likewise grateful to have come out of the incident alive.