Jamie Dornan was hospitalized after suffering “heart attack symptoms” from coming in contact with toxic caterpillars during a golf trip in Portugal.
Broadcaster Gordon Smart — who is close friends with Dornan, 41 — opened up about a “scary” golf trip in March 2023 that resulted in him and the actor ending up in the hospital during a Friday, January 12, episode of BBC‘s The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected show.
“I started to feel tingling in my left hand, then tingling in my left arm. I’ve been a son of a [General Practitioner doctor], I thought, this is normally the sign of a heart attack,” he said, adding, “So I said to the boys, ‘Do you mind dropping me at the medical center? I don’t want to alarm any of you but I think I’m having a heart attack.’”
Because of his high heart rate, Smart, 42, was rushed to the hospital before collapsing. Later, he saw “one of the other lads” he was with go past him in a hospital bed. After being questioned about how much caffeine and alcohol he consumed the day before, Smart was discharged from the hospital, although Dornan was not.
Dornan later told his friend, “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 quipped that the paramedics asked his famous friend for a selfie while he was riding in the ambulance.
After recovering, the men discovered they encountered “hairy processionary caterpillars” while playing golf. Smart shared that the toxic insects, found commonly in southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, were “killing people’s dogs and giving men in their 40s heart attacks.”
“Very lucky to come out alive,” he said. “It was a scary time.”
Although the Fifty Shades of Grey star has not commented on the incident, he was tagged in a number of photos from the trip.
In the carousel of social media pics, Dornan smiled with Smart and their other friends. Smart also shared clips of them golfing as well as enjoying a beach sunset.
“This time last week with Norn Iron’s finest. Portugal, what a place 🇵🇹,” he captioned the post while tagging Dornan.
Besides Smart, Dornan is also good friends with Andrew Garfield.
Dornan gushed about his friendship with Garfiled, 40, while attending the 2022 Oscars.
After the men posed together, Dornan told E! Live From the Red Carpet host Laverne Cox, “We just had this beautiful moment on the carpet, of going like, ‘Check us out. This is a cool thing!’” He continued, “We’ve known each other for 17 years … so to be able to share these last few months with him is a beautiful thing.”
