Fifty Shades of Jamie Dornan (16 page)

It was the killing scenes that Jamie felt were the hardest, with some so harrowing that he felt moved to apologise to the actresses who played his victims. Working on such tough material, on very dark, atmospheric sets, Dornan was also keen to lighten the mood whenever possible by dancing around the set between takes. ‘When it was appropriate I would make someone laugh. There were scenes where I’ve got a ligature around my victim’s neck and I’m pretending to squeeze with all my life. She’s foaming at the mouth, my sweat’s dripping in her eyes, I’m watching her die and her eyes are bulging. After every one of those scenes, when they’d say “Cut!” I was saying, “Oh my God I’m so sorry. I’m going to untie your feet here. Is that OK?” Because I am not that guy. I did my best to slip out of it as soon as “cut” was called.’

While the psychological strain was tough for Jamie, he also experienced searing physical pain portraying Spector’s fitness regime and fight scenes. Two operations, including keyhole surgery, on a smashed shoulder from a skiing accident four years previously had left the star in constant agony. His sex scenes, though, were a breeze in comparison for the former supermodel, who was clearly now a dab hand at stripping for the camera. But for
Hollyoaks
actress Bronagh Waugh, his on-screen wife, getting naked in front of the gorgeous former Calvin Klein pin-up – along with a roomful of cameras and crew – was terrifying. So terrifying, in fact, that she turned to drink before takes. ‘He’s a body of a god and I’m a normal girl,’ she said. ‘It was our first full
nudity scene for Jamie and me. We were both really nervous.The director Jakob Berbruggen is from Brussels and he was so very European about it all. I had to get into a bath and I was begging, I mean begging for bubbles. I was “Please whack in some Radox!” but the director said it would spoil the shot – and he was right.’

However, stress turned to comedy when her modesty patch – a strip of nude-coloured material, which is stuck to an actor’s private parts – started floating off as she lay in the hot bath. ‘I had this modesty patch on my lady bits and all actors will tell you they are notorious for not working very well. In the scene Jamie is watching me getting into the bath and I’m closing my eyes sinking into it. When I opened them the plaster was floating up and down in the path,’ the down-to-earth actress remembered. ‘Jamie was looking and we were just wetting ourselves. I think it is the grossest thing that has ever happened to me. Jamie’s seen me naked so many times he said “Bronagh I’m really over it.”’

On the other hand, when it came to Jamie’s first-ever full nudity scene, which was shockingly graphic, even the experienced underwear model knocked back whisky to get through it. ‘There was an incredibly graphic sex scene outside. It was very cold so we both had a wee dram before it,’ Bronagh told the
Sunday Mirror
newspaper. She also admitted that the whole experience was far from romantic: ‘It’s so weird as you get to know someone, I don’t see him like that (romantically). You get nervous with any sex scenes – you feel awful.’

A measure of just how famous Jamie had become came when his co-star Aisling Franciosi was completely overwhelmed on first meeting him. Playing the Spector family’s babysitter who
falls for the attractive father’s charms, the pair had a number of scenes together. She said of acting opposite the former Dior model: ‘Part of me was telling myself that I had to be professional but another part was screaming inside. My first scene was one where his character came to my bedroom, it was intense. But he was great, very supportive. He’s a humble guy.’

Jamie was clearly a hit with his fellow cast members and while there were plenty of high jinx on set, he made sure he stayed out of their way once filming was over for the day. ‘I felt they probably wouldn’t want to spend any time with me,’ he told the
Daily Mail
newspaper. ‘I apologised after every take, it was like a release to apologise and then we’d have a laugh. I used to beg for someone to make me laugh.’

He and Gillian Anderson also made a mutual decision not to meet each other socially, since they were playing the hunter and the hunted and thought it would increase the tension on set. ‘Because of the nature of the show it wouldn’t have made sense to hang out together. The more we kept apart the more sense it made.’

As it turned out, the on-screen pair did very little filming together and appeared together only four times. They both admired each other’s work, though, and stunning actress and mother-of-three Gillian told him in an interview with
Red
magazine, ‘I think it was pretty clear from the beginning that you were the man for the job. I just think it was a matter of convincing the powers that be. I’ve been in the same situation before, with people fighting my corner, but having to convince studios that you’re the one – it takes some effort.’

It was certainly worth the effort and Jamie found he was
learning quickly on the job, even though there was no denying he was a complete natural. Without even realising it, Jamie used his hands to show what side of Spector’s complex character he was portraying at any one time. ‘I wasn’t aware of it at first but the way I used my hands became a way for me to play Spector’s awareness,’ he told
Interview
magazine. ‘You see the difference in how he deals with the family, with his kids and the way he approaches things in his life.’

Jamie, who had previously admitted his method of acting came from watching Al Pacino in
The Godfather
, could also be seen adopting his long silences and lingering, pensive stares. ‘I’ve played a lot of broken people, maybe the silences are about the different kinds of vulnerability in them,’ he explained.

Jamie’s own emotional side was also being tested to the brink and he admitted to crying to let out pent-up emotion. The demanding role also caused him to wonder how his nearest and dearest would react to seeing him embody such a terrifying man. ‘I think it helps that I’m quite open and I’m a crier. Spector is devoid of emotion.

‘It will be interesting to see what the reaction is [by friends and family] because it is dark, I surprised myself with how dark I looked at times; I think I looked – not pleasant,’ Jamie said shortly before
The Fall
was aired.

Having filmed the glossy drama out of sequence, Jamie had the chance to watch it back in order before it was released for broadcast and he was immediately struck by how horrifying it was. ‘When you see it all put together I do struggle. I understand why people find it difficult to watch,’ he said.

Just under a year from the show’s wrap,
The Fall
premiered on 12 May 2013 on Irish channel RTI and the following evening on the BBC, to an admirable 3.5 million viewers. It went on to become BBC 2’s highest-rating drama launch in almost a decade, thanks in no small part to Jamie’s sickening portrayal of Spector.

TV critics and viewers were equally captivated and revolted by the series, and internet forums sprung up overnight devoted to Jamie, his cast members, show spoilers and plot twists. ‘If it had been a plot by Dornan to kill off his pretty boy alter ego overnight, then it was a stroke of genius,’ one journalist reported. ‘Well done Jamie, you’ve more than proved your mettle as a serious actor and not just a bit of fluff who once appeared on the arm of Keira Knightley,’ wrote Maeve Quigley in the
Sunday Mirror
, ‘even though we can’t help missing those Calvins. Just a wee bit.’

Dornan was now getting recognised everywhere, not for being an underwear model who appeared on street billboards but as a sadistic murderer. Giggles from girls he met at random were being replaced with shrieks of horror – and Jamie seemed to love it. ‘I had one incident in Notting Hill Gate where someone pointed at me and screamed, “There’s that serial killer!” That created a bit of a stir. But I love it. I loved playing that sick, sick man … whatever that means.’

Having scared the wits out of four million people on a weekly basis, Jamie was however slightly worried about the repercussions of coming into contact with members of the public. ‘I don’t get recognised a lot anyway, but I’m slightly anxious about how people will approach me now – because
if you see someone being creepy on TV, you automatically assume they’re a creepy guy.’

As the last episode, with its cliffhanger ending, was broadcast in June 2013, news had come that a second series was on its way. Dublin actor Emmett Scanlan, who played hard-bitten detective Glen Martin, had made the revelation on Twitter, writing in November 2013: ‘Start shooting
The Fall
season two next February. By the sound of it, it’s gonna be f*****g awesome. Can’t wait.’

While many applauded the BBC’s decision, which would see Jamie reprise the role, others were appalled. ‘The most repulsive drama ever broadcast on British TV concludes tonight.
The Fall
has featured graphic depictions of sexual murder, violent abuse, necrophilia, stalking, pornography and masturbation,’ Christopher Stevens wrote in the
Daily Mail
newspaper. ‘BBC executives are defending the show and their decision to renew it for a second series; they claim it provides insight into the motives of a sadistic psychopath […] The Fall doesn’t challenge evil; it wallows in it. This series is an invitation to share an extended rape fantasy.’

‘This gratuitously nasty drama was defended by its producer as an attempt to “change the nature of how TV tells crime stories and make them more like real life,”’ Allison Pearson wrote in the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘Really? When was the last time a serial killer turned out to be a grief counsellor who looks like a male model? Oh and he quoted T.S. Eliot in his killing journal as rapists do.

‘If the devil wears Prada ‘The Fall’ was a snuff movie in a silk blouse.’

Jamie by then hadn’t modelled for three years and despite the disapproval from some corners of the press, he was hopeful that playing Spector meant he wouldn’t have to return to posing for magazines to earn a crust. ‘No matter what I do there will be so many people who won’t accept me as an actor because I did modelling. But playing Paul Spector is a start. They can’t take that away. It’s a role that I hope will alter opinions of me. I’ve done it and it exists,’ he told the
Daily Mirror.
‘I’m proud of the show, really proud of it. But I won’t go so far as to say I’m proud of myself.’

Before reprising the role of Spector, though, Jamie admitted that he wanted to do something different, possibly something light-hearted. ‘I’d like to play somebody who doesn’t murder people for a change. I’d like to do something light. In a perfect world I’d really like to do something funny.’

Fortunately for Jamie, his wish was destiny’s command, as his next two roles were a would-be pigeon snatcher and an outlaw with an eighties-style mullet. His friends couldn’t help but see the funny side in all that he turned his hand to. No amount of fame would see Jamie’s ego inflate – they would see to that. As the Belfast lad jetted to film sets across the world, his pals kept him grounded by sending photos of him as a gawky teenager on WhatsApp. Not that he needed it, of course; Jamie was still as down to earth as they came. ‘I would put “ironing shirt sleeves” up there as one of the world’s toughest tasks,’ he tweeted five days after
The Fall
aired for the first time. He was clearly taking everything in his stride.

J
amie was now getting seriously good at auditions. Whereas previously he’d struggled to bag the role, standing nervously in front of casting agents, his experience on
The Fall
had clearly given him newfound confidence.

Soon after filming finished on the Belfast-based crime series, Jamie landed the lead role in Dutch flick
Flying Home
, as director Dominique Deruddere admitted that he was instantly taken with the former Calvin Klein clothes horse.

Jamie was to play Colin, a New York businessman who has to convince the elderly owner of a champion racing pigeon in Belgium to sell his beloved bird to a rich Arab sheik. But Colin ends up falling for his granddaughter. Reading the script was love at first sight for the rising star and having a foreign independent film with an esteemed European director at its
helm would undeniably look good on his acting CV. Moreover, playing a man who falls in love with a pretty girl while hunting down a pigeon in Belgium was going to be a walk in the park compared to strangling young women in Belfast, as their eyes bulged in terror. In short, this film ticked all the right boxes. ‘I don’t read scripts too often that have as much soul as this. I thought the script was really heartfelt, a little bit kooky, a little bit European … so I ended up doing it because I liked the script and I love Dominique.’

Casting the role hadn’t been straightforward. They were looking for someone who fitted the description of ‘handsome and successful’, which was easy enough, but they also needed someone who could convincingly flit seamlessly between ruthless businessman and sensitive lover. British casting agent Kate Dowd had sent Belgium-born moviemaker Deruddere hundreds of résumés and tapes from young actors keen to scoop the part but no one seemed to have the ‘second layer’ and depth of character that he was looking for. Until, that is, he stumbled across Jamie. After watching his casting tape, he called up Jamie’s agent and asked him in for some tryout sessions. ‘He had more to him than his pretty boy look had first revealed,’ he said. ‘This young fashion model turned out to be a solid actor.

‘Further casting sessions with Jamie strengthened my impression that he would be able to act out Colin’s deceitful plan without viewers losing sympathy for him.’

‘It was very nice working with him,’ he added. ‘He’s a great guy and a very good actor.’

The role was his and Jamie, drawing on all he had learned from
The Fall
, quickly got to work on researching the unusual hobby of pigeon fancying – the art and science of breeding pigeons and entering them for races the world over. ‘Pigeon fancying is something I knew little about but it’s quite an interesting world. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from it, which is something I wasn’t aware of. The only person I ever knew who’d done it before was boxer Mike Tyson, he is into pigeon fancying in a big way so I guess if someone as high profile as that and as aggressive as that is into something as obscure as pigeon fancying it must be worth something.’

As the summer of 2012 drew to a close, Jamie was enjoying the distinct holiday feeling and little known perks of working on a Flemish movie, as he flitted between the film’s locations in Dubai and Belgium. ‘Working on a Flemish set is relaxed, everyone is very chilled, obviously there’s beer at the end of every day, obviously we still have a lot of work to do but they create a very nice atmosphere,’ he said.

The cast was also incredibly welcoming, and Jamie and his on-screen lover Charlotte de Bruyne quickly bonded, particularly since she’d done her homework beforehand by searching for him on the internet in order to garner the inside track into who he was. ‘I only knew that he had been a Calvin Klein model. When Googling I really had to chuckle when I read about his relationship with Keira Knightley,’ she admitted. ‘Jamie was at the beginning of his acting career and so he felt like an equal to me. I felt that he was just as I was, still a little unsure – he may be older but I had the feeling that we were at the same stage in our lives.’

The feeling was mutual and the duo enjoyed some hilarious moments together on set. Whereas Charlotte’s English was word-perfect, Jamie amused the cast and crew with his mispronunciation of a variety of Belgian words and, in particular, the director’s surname. ‘I love Dominique Deruddere, he’s brilliant. I was calling him Dominique. What was I saying? Deruuder for a while, thinking that’s how you say it but I still can’t say it that well. He’s amazing; he’s like the nicest guy in the world and a great director,’ Jamie gushed after filming finished.

Back home, in his swanky pad in London with girlfriend Amelia, it was time to put his feet up before welcoming what would be one of the biggest years of his life, not just professionally but personally. Having just recovered from surgery on his shoulder, and as the year drew to a close, Jamie already had good news to reflect on. The first – and due to the public outcry by
Once Upon A Time
fans after the show’s creators killed off his character in the first series – was that Jamie had been invited to go back for a cameo appearance, which he duly accepted.

After returning from his five-week honeymoon in June with Amelia, just as the first episodes of
The Fall
were being screened, it wasn’t long before it was back to business and back on set. Jamie had been chosen to star in Channel 4 historical four-part miniseries
New Worlds
, in which he would play an outlaw. Set during the Restoration period, as Charles II took back the throne with a reign of terror, Jamie and his co-stars played young revolutionaries and star-crossed lovers fighting on both sides of the Atlantic.
London Evening Standard
told viewers to ‘Expect
sex, murder, plotting and treason […] this will fill a Game of Thrones-shaped hole until the new season starts in April.’

As if that wasn’t enough, he had also been nominated for his first-ever acting award and was up for Best Actor for his part in
The Fall
at the forthcoming TV Choice Awards. It was a major feat for someone who just a year before had been a relative unknown in the TV and film world, yet he was now receiving a nomination alongside
Doctor Who
’s Matt Smith and David Tennant in hit ITV drama
Broadchurch
.

Although Jamie didn’t make it into the final four for the awards ceremony, he was at least now regarded as being up there with the cream of the industry. And the highly skilled cast on his new show, which included
Skins
actress Freya Mavor and Joe Dempsie from
Games of Thrones
, was testament to how far he’d come. ‘It has attracted a diverse and glittering cast,’ Channel 4’s head of drama Piers Wenger said of the hotly anticipated sequel to 2008 BAFTA-nominated
The Devil’s Whore.

The bloody drama
New Worlds
would see Jamie’s character, a rebel named Abe Goffe, trying to overthrow the monarchy in 1680s England. Running around the film with a gun and crossbow was a dream role for Jamie; apart from giving him a respite from the gritty months of playing Paul Spector, it also gave him a chance to play out his boyhood fantasies. ‘Being an outlaw was great fun. I’m probably stuck in some transition period from boy to man but I loved all that running through woods with guns, arrows, unwashed hair and your band of mates, indulging my inner Robin Hood.

‘Essentially it was the script that drew me then the character
that I felt I could play … then I hoped I’d get on with the director and everyone else. On all these counts I have been so lucky with
New Worlds
.’

And like all of his roles – from the ponytailed lover of Kirsten Dunst’s Marie Antoinette to love-struck pigeon stalker – there was ample material for Jamie getting a good ribbing. Filming hadn’t even started before the laughter broke out on set when the wardrobe team styled Jamie a mullet glued to his own hair, while the rest of the cast sported handsome wigs. Seeing the funny side, he explained: ‘It’s my real, curly bap – then we added a sort of eighties rock thing around the back and sides to give it that seventeenth century feel. I was happy with it.’

While it was a source of hilarity during its seven-month production in Bristol, with co-stars saying it made him look like a seventeenth-century Russell Brand, it didn’t go unnoticed by amused critics either. ‘Goffe’s wild existence accounts for Dornan’s unkempt hair. While most of the cast sport rather elaborate full-head wigs Dornan gets some straggling wisps glued to his own short back and sides,’ one noted. Another complained, ‘New Worlds Jamie, idealist outlaw Abe, finally appeared after ten minutes but when he did, his mullet was just too distracting.’

Despite the teasing, Jamie had quickly settled into life on set thanks in no small part to his co-stars, in particular Freya who played his on-screen lover Beth. He also enjoyed the heavy historical research behind the character and revelled in learning about a new period of history after the show’s writers and creators Martine Brant and Peter Flannery gave them a
booklist to work through. ‘A couple of books were suggested to us. There was one
Cavalier
by Lucy Worsley that I know Freya and I both read that was recommended by Martine. It became a joke competition between Freya and I to finish it, my copy was more subtly on my iPad but Freya constantly lugged her copy everywhere as I teased and tested her knowledge.

‘Because I went to school in Belfast, the English Civil War wasn’t high on the curriculum. So to some extent I had to learn from scratch. I had no idea that it was such a barbaric time. We don’t want it to be a history lesson but I think audiences will learn something from watching
New Worlds
,’ he told the
Sunday Mail.

As he did with all his characters, Jamie delved deep into their psyche and tried hard to find something within them that he could relate to. In this case, the rising star was convinced that teenagers would be able to identify with the battles his character faced. ‘Young people still feel enraged about the same injustices. I like to think people now are treated with greater decency and things aren’t as brutal and bloody as they were at that time,’ he explained.

Jamie also looked to some of his more boisterous and feisty friends for inspiration when working through how to physicalise the character, since Abe was quick to fight with his hands rather than talking through his concerns. ‘The thing about Abe was there’s a lot of talk, and he is one of those people who talks with his fists,’ Jamie said of the part. ‘But you meet these guys, in any time period, who are very headstrong. I have mates like that who are just f**king aggressive. They move a certain way, especially
around other people, around new people. They bristle up a little bit. And I tried to draw on some of that for Abe. He isn’t comfortable with company outside of his very select few.’

But while it had been an interesting project for Jamie, the reviews were mixed when it premiered the following April. ‘Idealists might be inspiring in history books but they don’t make for captivating TV characters,’ said a review in the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘Even Jamie can’t save Channel 4’s latest historical drama New Worlds. I will probably be thrown in the stocks for saying so but I’ll happily take a rotten egg to the face if it means not having to sit through this hammy romp again,’ TV critic Oliver Grady added to the complaints. ‘His chemistry with leading lady Freya Mavor was convincing but ruined by the writers expecting us to believe her character Beth would have fallen for a man only a few minutes after he abducted her – even if he does look like Jamie Dornan.’

However, perhaps, falling for Dornan’s charms in a matter of seconds might not have been wholly unrealistic. Indeed, his next role was to be bigger, better and more extraordinary than the talented man would ever have expected. And a great slice of that Irish charm to which Doran had often attributed his success, rather than to raw talent, would clearly see him right again.

The book on everyone’s lips –
Fifty Shades of Grey
– which had sold over 2 million copies in just one month after it hit bookshelves in June 2011 was being made into a film. The steamy novel published by Vintage Books, which made the
New York Times
bestseller list, later became the quickest selling book in history after selling 100 million copies in three years. It
revolved around a female college student, Anastasia Steele, who finds herself in a kinky relationship involving sadomasochism and submission with a twenty-seven-year-old billionaire called Christian Grey. The book’s two sequels,
Fifty Shades Darker
and
Fifty Shades Freed
, probe into the couple’s deepening relationship.

With such a massive readership, largely believed to be women over the age of thirty but also reportedly popular with teenagers and students alike, the erotic must-read was always destined for Hollywood. Its author Erika Leonard, better known under her pen name E.L. James, had orchestrated a deal with careful consideration after countless approaches by film-makers desperate to make it their own. ‘I didn’t know if [selling it to Hollywood] was the right thing to do. Then I thought, “I’m middle-aged – when in the hell am I going to get another chance to make a movie?”’ she admitted.

In March 2012, after a fierce bidding war between ten of the world’s top studios, including Sony, Warner Bros and Paramount, James plumped on selling the book’s film rights to Universal Pictures and Focus Features in a £3 million deal. The canny British TV executive-turned-author had managed to broker a deal in which she would retain some control during the movie’s creative process. As well as hand-picking the director and producers, the forty-eight-year-old mum-of-two revealed that the studios had, in a rare move, also granted her cast and script approvals.

The plucky writer, who admitted a ‘midlife crisis’ had led to her writing the erotic romance fiction, was won over by
Universal chairman Donna Langley – who ‘loved the books’ and ‘made a great cup of tea’ – and Focus president of production Jeb Brody. The latter’s previous hits included
Lost in Translation
and
The Pianist
, and she had ‘a great background in handling difficult material’. ‘I really like clever men who challenge you,’ James told
Entertainment Weekly
, ‘and with Jeb, I thought, yeah, I can work with that!’ After admitting she was given control over most aspects of the film, she added, ‘This makes me sound like a control freak, doesn’t it.’