A former semi-professional footballer from Redditch woke from a coma after a car crash speaking fluent French and believing he was Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey, despite having only a basic grasp of the language from school.
Rory Curtis, 25, suffered a serious brain injury and a broken pelvis when his van flipped over on the M42 near Tamworth, Staffordshire, in August 2012. He was placed in an induced coma for six days. Upon waking, he began conversing with nurses in fluent French, a language he had not spoken in 12 years.
Doctors at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital diagnosed a multifocal intracranial brain haemorrhage, where blood vessels had burst and blood was leaking into his brain. Curtis also believed he was the Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, saying: 'I cannot remember much but I know in my head I thought I was Matthew McConaughey.'
He left hospital in November 2012, no longer believing he was McConaughey, but retaining his newfound fluency in French. 'I didn't even do French at GCSE so haven't studied it since Year 9 - then all of a sudden I'm fluent in it,' he said. 'I can't explain how it happened. It's incredible really.'
Curtis also experienced periods where he believed he was 12 or 14 years old and would cry when his parents left. He was treated with an experimental drug after his family were approached by the National Institute for Health Research Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre.
