Fifty Shades of Jamie Dornan (3 page)

Good friends also helped with his recovery, as did music, which had become a big part of his life. Jamie was an accomplished guitarist and he found that losing himself in songwriting helped him through some very dark days.

He also formed a close bond with school pal David Alexander, who not only shared his passion for music but had lost a parent too, in his second year of sixth form. David’s father had died when he was seventeen, and the two boys found rifling through his record collection – which included albums by Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones – not just therapeutic but also influential in singing and writing songs together.

The pair spent hours composing in their bedrooms and, once they had a few tracks down, they recorded them onto a CD. Enthused with their hard work, the music-loving pair decided to become a two-piece band officially, calling themselves Sons of Jim – after their fathers, who shared the same name. ‘Dave and I went to school together and became quite friendly in the sixth year. We shared a lot of the same musical interests. We recorded some stuff together back in Ireland just to put on CD really,’ Jamie said. As well as singing and playing the guitar Jamie also played the harmonica, which helped to shape their folk band sound.

‘[Having both lost a parent] it’s helpful in our song writing,’ David said of their mutual understanding and shared moments
of grief. ‘The two of us have come up on the same street. I think we can talk about it to each other and we know what the other one is getting at when certain emotions or things are put down in songs.’

Nights out with his friends, many of whom ended up being lawyers or barristers, ‘not that you’d ever know it’, also helped with the healing process. And so did Sunday lunches back home with Liesa and Jessica, who were making great strides towards their future careers as marketing director of Ulster Linens and fashion designer at Diesel Ireland respectively.

Therapy also came in the guise of exercise for Jamie, as his hours of rugby and football training also started to have a positive effect on his body. The toned physique, which was later to be adored by millions of women the world over, started to emerge and Jamie began to develop into an extremely handsome young man. Much to his relief, he was no longer the small, baby-faced boy in his class. ‘Because I used to play a lot of sport I’ve always been in decent enough shape. When I used to get asked to do a bit of body work before a photo shoot I’d lie and say, “Yeah, I’m going to the gym” but I literally never did anything,’ Jamie confessed once, when discussing his muscular frame.

Even though competitive sports kept him looking well-defined, Jamie continued to be disappointed with his appearance until he was old enough to grow a beard. As soon as hormones permitted it, he grew as much facial hair as possible and felt comfortable in his skin for the first time in his life. For starters it hid his youthful features and meant that he was less likely to be referred to as ‘cute’ by women.

While it had ‘dangerously bushy ambitions’ according to the star, Jamie kept his beard neatly groomed and in later years admitted that when acting required him to shave it off, he became ‘seriously humpy’. ‘I think photographers and directors realise that my face doesn’t quite work without a beard. I look too young to sell clothes, too young to be a dad. Too young for anything […] I’m still fighting the cute thing. I’m definitely not happy without a beard,’ he said.

While many teenage boys will identify with young Jamie’s obsession with growing facial hair, even as a grown man in his twenties, the model was often gripped by bouts of beard envy. In one instance the young model was mesmerised by the facial forest of a commuter on London’s Underground. ‘This man’s beard was massive,’ he remembered, ‘and I was just staring at it, I loved how it owned his face.’

With all these teenage hormones flying around, and the stress of losing his mother and a group of good friends, Jamie would have been forgiven for flunking out of school. However, against the odds and despite an incredibly disruptive couple of years, he left Methodist College with three A levels in Classics, English and History of Art. Much to his father’s delight, Jamie also won a place at Teesside University to study marketing. It certainly wasn’t going to take him to Hollywood but, as he was not exactly sure what path to take at that point in his life, the three-year course seemed as good an option as any.

Jamie had measured his family ties against a desire to leave Belfast from an early age, and it was time to go. He adored the city and everything it had to offer: culture, art galleries,
museums, bars, music venues. Undoubtedly, for a boy like him who was seemingly interested in everything, it was a haven. ‘It’s a brilliant place, with brilliant people. We have our problems but it’s a tiny percentage. There’s a real sense of fun, a real good-naturedness – people don’t take themselves too seriously. I try not to take myself too seriously.’

Going to university would also provide him with the chance to leave the comfortable environs of home to build his own life and meet new friends who knew nothing of his past, which seemed appealing – and he felt more than ready for that.

However, on arriving at Teeside, in Middlesbrough, it quickly became clear that he’d made a terrible mistake. ‘Obviously his life has been coloured by the deaths of his mother and his friends and I think it has left him with a great sense of comradeship,’ his father explained. ‘All of it has made him very thoughtful about life in general and about what he wants to do.’

Whether he’d been derailed by recent events or he realised that a career in marketing wasn’t for him, Jamie pulled himself out of university before the academic year was out and returned to Holywood to review his options.

Not wanting to rest on his laurels and desperate to stay in shape, Jamie continued playing rugby and it was then that he was picked up by the Belfast Harlequins – a dream come true. Being a star player for his home city’s team was exactly what Jamie had long aspired to and everything seemed to be falling into place.

Not long after that though, in 2001, his older sister Liesa noticed an unusual advert in the local paper. Jamie’s two sisters
had long been adamant that their younger brother possessed all the good looks of any catwalk model so when they saw that Channel 4’s
Model Behaviour
show was holding auditions in Belfast, they encouraged him to try it out.

Produced by Princess Productions, the show was similar in format to ITV1’s
Popstars
; it followed the fortunes of several hopefuls as they lived together and battled it out for the top prize: a modelling contract with top agency Select. ‘I wasn’t too keen, to be honest. It wasn’t something I wanted to do,’ Jamie admitted to the
Sunday Times
. ‘Back then I was playing a lot of rugby, I was a bit of a lad. Male modelling didn’t really seem like the next step.’

Not wanting to go to the auditions alone, Jamie managed to persuade a friend to accompany him and so the pair joined the queue of hundreds of wannabe models desperate for a taste of fame. The duo were interviewed by the TV team and sent home to wait for a phone call which would let them know whether they had been successful enough to star on the show.

Incredibly, despite his rugged good looks and Irish charm, Jamie hadn’t been picked. ‘We didn’t get asked back the next day,’ he said. ‘I was on my own from there, and it worked quite well actually.’

Although the TV executives weren’t exactly enamoured with the blue-eyed boy, scouts from the modelling agency, Select, did notice him and told the handsome twenty-year-old to get in touch. Jamie was at a crossroads: he had dropped out of uni, desperately wanting to be an actor and while male modelling was an option, it was an unlikely one. One thing was for certain,
though: being holed up in the small town of Holywood in Northern Ireland wasn’t going to contribute anything towards making it big in America’s Hollywood.

His stepmother Samina noticed his ambitious streak and encouraged Jamie to go to London to seek his fortune – he was sold. One plane ride to Stansted and two train journeys later, the good-looking, well-honed youngster arrived in the capital with a bit of cash in his bank account and a vague plan of going to drama school before wangling himself some TV or theatre roles. There was also the back-up option of being a catwalk model if the acting didn’t work out. ‘I loved the fact that acting didn’t involve getting up at seven in the morning, getting a train with a million other people, going to sit at a desk and clocking off at 5:30 pm. When I was younger I thought maybe one day I’d be involved in sport in terms of career. I was also involved in youth theatre. Then as you get a bit older and have to make decisions about roughly where you want to be and what you want to be doing, it just kind of happened,’ Jamie said some years later of his acting career.

Truth to be told, though, it didn’t really just happen like that and his rise to fame was not as easy as the then established star made out. Jamie would have to endure poverty-stricken living quarters, nights sobbing in the pub and the thankless task of working as a barman before getting a hint of the good times he had dreamed of – oh, and with a little help from his dad along the way.

I
t was a big risk, considering that he had come nowhere near winning the Channel 4 show
Model Behaviour
, but it looked like he might have to go with his back-up plan after all. As soon as Jamie arrived in London, it was obvious he was out of his depth. Despite coming from a wealthy family, the wannabe actor was adamant that he was going to support himself, whatever the consequences. However, with no drama school offer and no proper job to speak of, the move to London started to look like a massive disaster. The first six months, in Jamie’s own words, were ‘rough’.

On arriving in the capital, the wide-eyed youngster rented a flat in Hackney, East London. Although now a relatively trendy part of London with millionaire loft rooms and swanky town houses, back in the late 1990s it was still an undesirable place to
live, with high levels of unemployment, soaring crime rates and cheap housing.

His newly found accommodation was the polar opposite of the sprawling detached house back home in Northern Ireland, with its generous living space and a well-stocked kitchen. The flat, located on a seedy council estate, was grim and the cooking facilities were basic. Having little cash to his name, Jamie refused to splash out on essentials so furniture was sparse and provisions almost non-existent. ‘For some reason, despite the fact it’s so cheap, I felt like I couldn’t even afford a kettle,’ he admitted, ‘to make tea I’d just leave the hot tap running for ages until I got it scalding.’

Just as one might expect of wannabe actors in Hollywood waiting for their first movie role, Jamie became a barman in Knightsbridge, a swanky district of the capital that is home to millionaires and socialites. Although it earned him a wage, working in a pub was soul-destroying and it soon started to look as though Jamie was losing a grip on what he’d set out to do. For starters he was knocking back pints most nights and, due to lack of exercise and poor diet, he lost a stone in weight. Speaking of his first six months in London, Jamie recalled, ‘I drank too much and didn’t get my act together. I worked in a pub in Knightsbridge for six months, crying every night.’

Years of playing rugby and football at school meant that he arrived in London bulked up and healthy, but a gym pass was out of the question in his current situation. ‘I lost a stone, not consciously,’ he explained. ‘When I was playing rugby I was in the gym the whole time. In London I just didn’t go to the gym as much, at all actually, so I just naturally weakened.’

Jamie had to face up to the reality that acting wasn’t going to happen straightaway; Select modelling agency, however, were more than happy to give him a go. A trickle of jobs followed over a few months, consisting of catalogue work and striking cheesy poses for the pre-teen magazine market.

In 2002 he also went to Milan to try his hand at the runway, but the trip to the fashion capital turned out to be a flop. What the agency may not have known before he arrived in the stylish Italian city was that Jamie had a very unusual walk which made him wholly unsuitable for presenting clothes along a catwalk. ‘I’m not very good at walking which is weird, I know, because it’s one of the first things you do,’ he told talk show host Graham Norton many years later, explaining how he’d always walked on his tiptoes and was ‘quite bouncy’. ‘When I was signed up as the face of a big fashion house and they saw me walk, opening their show on the catwalk was immediately written out of the contract […] it was that bad,’ he said later.

Therefore, it looked initially like modelling wasn’t Jamie’s forte either and he was already disgruntled with his career choice. ‘I have no interest in being a model and I don’t consider myself a model,’ he said a few years later. ‘I went to Milan in 2002 to do runway and I didn’t get any work. I just got bitten by mosquitoes.’

His father seemed pretty unimpressed with his career choice too. ‘It wasn’t exactly what my dad expected of me. A lot of his mates thought it was embarrassing that I was having my picture taken for money. I’d grown up playing a lot of rugby and they all probably thought it was a wee bit nancy boyish,’ Jamie commented.

Jim was also taken aback by the state in which he found his son after insisting he pop over one day to watch the rugby while visiting the capital. He arrived at his modest flat in East London only to discover that Jamie had a useless black-and-white TV with a rolling picture. ‘The picture kept flickering. I sat with my dad, with a cup of tea I’d made from a rusty, hot tap watching this pathetic excuse for a telly. He just looked at me and said, “Son you can’t live like this,” put his foot down and helped me get out of that situation.’

It was indeed hard for Jim to see his one and only son live in such squalor, particularly when he had seen him just a few years before go through such a hard time after losing his mother. Knowing that Lorna would also have wanted to see their youngest in a safer environment, Jim insisted on helping him out financially so that he could find a flat in a better area of the city.

His show of faith paid off. With his father’s backing, Jamie started to work increasingly harder and heading along a path which would ultimately lead to his true calling of being an actor. Select weren’t going to give up on him either and they were about to land him the contract of a lifetime. Unbeknownst to him, and just around the corner, Jamie was to enjoy a lifestyle that he never imagined possible. He was to be one of the most famous male models on the planet, jetting from Paris to London and New York for a range of high-profile campaigns which would see him spotted on billboards in far-flung places he’d never even visited.

For the time being, he had settled into a comfortable flat in
West London under the guidance of his caring father, and life was looking a lot more positive. Jamie was still desperate to be an actor but that would have to wait for a few years yet. ‘I’d always wanted to act but the modelling contracts came more easily.’

Jamie’s lucky break happened when he caught the eye of fashion photographer Bruce Weber. Famous for shooting brands like Versace and editorials for magazines including
Vogue
, the snapper also undertook a great deal of catalogue work for high street brands. And when Jamie posed for American store Abercrombie & Fitch in 2001, he fitted Weber’s all-American aesthetic of photographing models with a rosy glow. Dressed in long-sleeved T-shirt and brown cord jacket with his soft features framed beneath brown curled locks, Jamie possessed everything that Weber loved to capture through the lens. ‘I like to feature men and women who are really healthy,’ he once said, admitting that young models with eating disorders upset him.

Although slight in frame, Jamie was athletic and strong, and therefore fitted the bill perfectly. His Irish charm and modesty would also have been a hit with Weber, who not long before meeting Jamie had kicked supermodel Cindy Crawford off a shoot for being rude. He had sent the ‘face of Revlon’ home in tears after she upset his team working on a campaign for the make-up brand. ‘She was so rude to everyone, not to me, but to the whole crew, that I didn’t really go for that,’ he told the
Huffington
Post
.

The stunning model – who was being photographed on location at a boxing gym in Los Angeles with a group of old boxers – apparently told the shoot’s art director, ‘Why is
Bruce photographing those old boxers when he should be photographing me? My make-up is ready.’ Weber was so taken aback by her attitude that he told Crawford, who ended her contract with Revlon in 2001, to go home. ‘She’s the only model I ever sent back,’ he added.

For Jamie, therefore, it was something of a coup to have turned Weber’s head and although he didn’t revel in the idea of modelling – and never really would – he was in awe of the man who could teach him everything he needed to know about the competitive and notoriously bitchy fashion industry.

Weber was down to earth and kind, and it was clear that he, in turn, was impressed by the young fresh-faced model. ‘He is a total legend. I’m not sure I know much about fashion now, but I certainly didn’t years ago – but I knew who he was,’ Jamie told
The Scotsman
. ‘We got on very well, so for the first couple of years I pretty much only worked with him, which, looking back, is kind of ridiculous and amazing. He is incredible. He is very softly spoken and so kind and a master of his craft as well.’

Jamie, meanwhile, was becoming master of his own craft, and posing and pouting for the camera came to him astonishingly easily. He was also popular with the crew, as he wasn’t a diva – quite simply he didn’t believe the hype and he was there to do a job. Besides, he still couldn’t believe that he was good-looking enough to be paid simply for just staring down the lens of the camera.

What did make the job fun, though, was the eccentric and creative people he would meet throughout his new career. Indeed, it was on his first ever major campaign with Weber at
the helm that he came across a very interesting person. Single and alone in London, a pretty young actress was about to sweep him off his feet; it was to be a major turning point in both his professional and personal life – and the humble, straightforward world he’d known for the past twenty-one years would never be the same again.