‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ star Jamie Dornan hospitalized after toxic caterpillar caused heart attack symptoms —report

"Fifty Shades of Grey" star Jamie Dornan was hospitalized after an encounter with a “toxic” hairy caterpillar on his Portugal trip last year.

According to a report from People Magazine, Scottish broadcaster and Dornan’s friend Gordon Smart said he and Dornan were on a golf trip in Portugal in March 2023, when they experienced strange symptoms.

On BBC’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Unexpected” radio show, Smart narrated how he started feeling a “tingling in my left hand and tingling in my left arm,” after a night of drinking with the boys. According to Smart, those are symptoms “normally the sign of the start of a heart attack."

He went to a local medical center, where doctors told Smart he had a heart rate of 210 BPM and sent him to the hospital.

Later, Smart learned Dornan had also been checked into the hospital after experiencing the same symptoms.

A week after the incident, Smart said he got a “phone call from the doctor” who asked if the group met any caterpillars while on vacation, before sending him a local news story about processionary caterpillars.

It was then that they learned they likely ran on to a processionary caterpillar on the golf course.

Processionary caterpillars have tiny hairs containing a toxic protein that can trigger itching, rashes, eye irritation, sore throat, and difficulty breathing in both humans and animals.

"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.

— Jade Veronique Yap/LA, GMA Integrated News