“Fifty Shades of Grey” star Jamie Dornan once got hospitalized after a strange encounter with a bug while on vacation.
Journalist Gordon Smart recalled the shocking incident in “The Good, the Bad, and the Unexpected” involving him and the actor while they were in Portugal.
After a night of golf, wine, and espresso martinis, both experienced alarming symptoms that were later linked to toxic caterpillars.
Jamie Dornan And Gordon Smart’s Health Scare During Vacation In Portugal
During a conversation on the Scottish BBC panel show, “The Good, the Bad, and the Unexpected,” Gordon shared details of how a memorable vacation in Portugal with Dornan took an unexpected turn.
Recalling the experience, Smart noted that he started to feel strange after a “great” first day. “We had a great time the first day, played loads of golf, went out, lots of wine, and then we got onto espresso martinis,” he said.
Smart continued: “Anyway, the next day, we played golf, we were all absolutely dreadful and I started to feel tingling in my left hand and then tickling in my left arm. I’m the son of a GP and thought, ‘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 added, per the Daily Mail.
Worried about his health, the former journalist sought medical attention at a local medical center, where he found out he had a high heart rate. He took an Uber ride to the hospital but collapsed and woke up in a hospital bed attached to a machine.
Jamie Dornan Found Himself In ‘The Back Of An Ambulance’
When examined by a doctor and quizzed about what he drank the day before, Smart said: “As a Scottish man in Portugal, when you start saying, ‘Well, I think there were nine bottles of white wine, I had six espresso martinis,’ and I could see him shaking his head disgusted with the Scottish specimen in front of him.”
However, when Smart returned to the hotel from the hospital, he discovered Dornan connected to medical equipment.
He recalled: “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.’”
A week later, a doctor suggested their symptoms might be linked to toxic hairy processionary caterpillars prevalent on South Portugal’s golf courses.
“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,” Smart added. “We’d brushed up against hairy processionary caterpillars and have been very lucky to come out of that one alive.”
Jamie Dornan Says He ‘Hates’ Having His Photograph Taken Despite Being A Model
The health scare experience came after Dornan recently admitted that he hated being a model despite earning up to £10,000 [$13,000] a day working with luxury brands like Calvin Klein, Dior, and Armani.
In an interview with the Radio Times, “The Tourist” actor admitted his aversion to having his photo taken.
He stated, “[I] hate having my photograph taken. I spent ten years getting paid to have people take photographs of me. If you allow yourself to get into the ‘why?’ of that, you’re f—–. Just accept it.”
“For whatever reason, they want to take your photograph. Go with it, have fun with it, enjoy the ride. Which is what I did, although I hated it in many ways,” he added, per Daily Mail.
Jamie Dornan Recounts A ‘Scary’ Stalker Experience
In an interview with The Independent, Dornan shared that he faced a “scary” encounter with a stalker following the success of the acclaimed “Fifty Shades of Grey” films.
The 41-year-old revealed that he tries to maintain a distance between himself and “fandom.”
“I tried to put walls up around [the fans], to really try and not let that in,” he said. “I’m pretty good at just blocking any of the noise associated with whatever fandom is – not letting it affect me, or more importantly, my family.”
Recounting a pre-COVID stalker incident, he added: “I’ve been involved in situations where it’s impacted my family. I had a situation… a stalker-type situation before Covid. That was f—– scary. Someone turned up at my house when my kids were there… The more I can block that out, the better it is for me and the family.”
