Six weeks after starting her English degree at Cambridge University, the actress Georgie Henley became “very ill”. Aged 18, she’d contracted the rare infection necrotising fasciitis, which can get into the body from a cut, scratch or insect bite. Early symptoms can include a red, warm or swollen area of skin that spreads fast, severe pain and fever.
“I don’t want to talk about it in a way that’s potentially irresponsible,” Henley says, “because there’s already a bit of a stigma around it in terms of the nickname of it being like a ‘flesh-eating disease’.” But she adds: “It was probably the scariest 48 hours of my life, and definitely that of my parents and family. I very nearly died.”
Somehow she still crammed a
