Believe it or not, the last person we'd expect to perpetuate the Terry Gilliam Curse recently landed in the emergency room: Verne Troyer, soon to be seen as Mike Myers' tiny bad-joke magnet in The Love Guru, was reportedly dispatched to a hospital outside Vancouver while shooting Gilliam's near-doomed Heath Ledger project The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus:

A source close to Troyer, 39, says the actor was experiencing "flu-like symptoms."... Adds the source, "He's been working really hard on the film. They just wanted to hydrate him."

A rep for Troyer denied that he was treated for a drug-related problem. "Verne is fine and doing well and is back to work," the rep tells Us.

We wouldn't normally care to speculate about Troyer's potential for relapse here (he underwent treatment for alcoholism in 2006), but with Gilliam and Us Magazine both being who and what they are, we're not exactly choking on our grain of salt. Anyway, didn't new insurance regulations after Ledger's passing require all Gilliam principals to be under strict 24-hour supervision throughout production? And how much water does Verne Troyer really need in a day, anyway?

• 'Mini Me' Verne Troyer Hospitalized [Us]

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