Jamie Dornan Talks to London Evening Standard
This is taken from the London Evening Standard interview by Lucy Hunter Johnston. Great interview about his current work, Fifty Shades of Grey and his life in London.
JAMIE DORNAN, Abe Gough, revolutionary outlaw
Do you want me to do it now?’ asks Jamie Dornan in a low Northern Irish lilt. He composes himself with a swig of tea then directs the full force of his piercing gaze towards me. Wham! There it is: the trademark ‘Dornan furrow’, the face that sold a thousand pairs of pants for Calvin Klein, terrified an audience of 3.5 million in the BBC Two drama The Fall, and will be glaring down upon Anastasia Steele’s backside, spanking paddle in hand, as the billionaire BDSM fanatic Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades of Grey film.
Dornan is adamant he always wanted to act and that his supermodelling career, working with brands from Dior to Hugo Boss as the so-called ‘Golden Torso’, was merely a lucrative distraction. Brooding aside, he’s far from your stereotypical clotheshorse. He’s a hard-drinking, rugby-playing, Man United-supporting 31-year-old who listens to The Kinks, reads Oscar Wilde and litters his conversation with expletives. ‘I’ve never felt massively satisfied from standing there while someone takes my photograph,’ he says. ‘It’s never given me a thrill.’ So why did he do it? ‘It would take a very foolish man to turn down the stuff that was offered to me. You’re in your twenties, and people are going to give you a silly amount of money to lean against a wall with your head down. F*** me, you’ve got to do it.’ In fact, he’s still at it. This season he is being paid a small fortune as the face of the chic Italian suit label Zegna and upmarket trainer brand Hogan.
And from one sick man to another. Dornan has just returned from Vancouver, where he was filming Fifty Shades, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of EL James’ erotic novel series that outsold Harry Potter and got housewives the world over hot under the collar, allegedly bringing about its own baby boom. Dakota Johnson, daughter of the Miami Vice actor Don and Melanie Griffith, will play Anastasia Steele, the shy, virginal student who has her sexual awakening in Grey’s ‘Red Room of Pain’. ‘I’ve never felt that Christian needs to be some kind of monster,’ he has said previously of the role. ‘I certainly don’t fear it. I already got a glimpse into working with Sam at the test, and I’d met Dakota by then. So I had an idea of how I felt it would be if I got the part. None of it scared me.’ Dornan wasn’t Taylor-Johnson’s first choice. He sent in an audition tape, but had lost out to Queer as Folk and Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam. ‘You know, one door closes, another opens,’ he has said. ‘When he dropped out, I didn’t instantly think, “Oh, here we go, maybe I should cancel that holiday,” but I did feel that maybe we’d revisit the idea of me.’ Christian Grey is the second severely damaged character he’ll have played in as many years, so I suspect that New Worlds’ Abe Gough, a revolutionary outlaw who roams the woods, but is a man of principles, was a welcome respite.
You can read the full article at London Evening Standard.
