A photo (here, here, and here) of the famous TV sitcom Mr. Bean’s actor Rowan Atkinson allegedly lying in a bed in a sick condition is being shared across social media platforms. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Photo of Rowan Atkinson, aka Mr. Bean, lying on a bed in a sick condition.
Fact: This is a morphed picture. The original photo shows a person named Barry Balderstone from Bollington, England. This photo was reportedly taken in October 2019, a day before Barry died from advanced Parkinson’s disease. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search on the photo that led us to a few news reports (here, here, and here) from 2020 that contained a similar photo of an old man wearing the same red T-shirt. However, he is not Rowan Atkinson.
The man seen in the photo is Barry Balderstone, a civil engineer from Bollington, England. Barry died in October 2019 from advanced Parkinson’s disease. As per the news reports, he used to suffer from a multitude of health conditions and was denied full healthcare funding by the East Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group.
This photo was reportedly taken a day before he passed away. By comparing this photo of Barry with the viral photo, it can be concluded that his photo was digitally edited to make him look like Mr. Bean’s actor, Rowan Atkinson, and peddle false news that he is sick.
A quick keyword search about Rowan Atkinson’s health yielded no news reports about him being ill or bedridden. Interestingly, we found a few videos (here) from earlier July 2024 when he attended (here and here) the 2024 British Grand Prix.
To sum up, a digitally edited photo of an old man is being falsely shared as the photo of a sick, bedridden Rowan Atkinson, the Mr. Bean fame.
