An award-winning actor may have had a recent near-death experience, and it all started with caterpillars.
Jamie Dornan, star of acclaimed works such as Belfast and The Fall as well as the popular 50 Shades films, was golfing in Portugal last year and ended up hospitalized, according to a story told by his friend and golfing buddy, Scottish broadcaster Gordon Smart.
Smart told a BBC podcast that, after a night out drinking espresso martinis and wine, he felt "tingling in my left hand and tingling in my left arm," which can be early warning signs of a heart attack.
After calling an Uber to take him to a nearby hospital, Smart said he collapsed in the car and woke up in a hospital bed.
"As I was lying there, one of the other lads I was with went past on a hospital bed with doctors shouting the same questions to him," Smart recalled, relaying that a doctor had asked him about the previous night's alcohol intake. "And I thought, 'That's not a good sign that he's in the same state as me.'"
Smart said Dornan was among the "other lads" in the hospital, too.
"There [Dornan] was with all this stuff attached to this chair saying, '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,'" he said.
About a week after the incident, Smart said a doctor called him and asked if they had encountered any caterpillars on the golf course, then sent him a link about processionary caterpillars.
"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. It turns out we brushed up against processionary caterpillars and had been very lucky to come out of that one alive," Smart said.
Dornan himself has yet to comment on Smart's tale of dangerous insect run-ins, but People quoted "a source close to Dornan" that balked at the story.
"He never went into the hospital — he even played a game of golf the next day and won," they told People.
Perhaps we need to file this one into a gray area – pick any of the 50 shades you like – until Dornan himself confirms or denies.
