Jamie Dornan talks to GQ about his career. Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter 

Jamie Dornan is an actor, model, and musician from Northern Ireland who dropped out of university to pursue his career and in the early 2000s started modeling, working with a variety of high-profile brands. The actor first explored screen acting in 2006 in Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette", but the major success came after he was cast as Christian Grey in "Fifty Shades Trilogy". 

The actor recently spoke to GQ about his career experience, criticism, and life after loss, along with the upcoming black-and-white Troubles drama, ‘Belfast’. The actor shared that his wife, composer Amelia Warner, and their three daughters have lived a short drive from Stroud for several years. "It was after finishing the Fifty Shades films, really. We just had a desire to get out of the city entirely. We had a small place down the road in the Cotswolds, but upscaled. Furthermore, we still have a place in London and get decent use out of it. The move was for the kids, really. You don’t notice the traffic or the poor air quality in London when you’re there, but you notice its absence once out. Also, have you seen how many fucking apps you need to park in London?"

Talking about the criticism he received for his role as Christian Grey in "Fifty Shades Trilogy", Jamie said, "Look, put it this way: It's done no harm to my career to be part of a movie franchise that has made more than $1 billion. Every working actor would say the same thing. It's provided a lot. There's no shame in saying it's transformed my life and my family's life financially. I am very, very grateful for this and always will be. And the fans loved it. Kevin Maher [the film critic] at [Britain's] the Times didn’t love it — what a surprise! But I take issue with the whole thing being just a bit of a joke. Everyone involved worked as hard as they could on those films, including myself." Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), Fifty Shades Darker (2017), and Fifty Shades Freed (2018) are the adaptation of E.L. James’s novel and the movie earned 25% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson starred in Fifty Shades Trilogy. Image Source: Vanity Fair 

Jamie Dornan explains that there needs to be acceptable when it comes to acting or any job, knowing you don't have complete control over certain situations. But you know what you're getting into, and he debated whether to take the Fifty Shades part for a long time. He quoted, "Sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised; sometimes you can be bitterly disappointed. Take that project, [and]you know that loads of people are going to hate it — hate it before they have even seen it. Why? Because, guess what? The majority of people hated the books. And I'm not saying I don't recognize why those books were so powerful for millions of people, but you aren’t going to have books that were horrifically critiqued turned into movies that will be critically acclaimed. You are dealing with the same material. That's the raw material we had."

The actor also mentioned that even with the backlash and criticism he received for the movie, he does not regret taking up the role of Christian Grey because he looked at the bigger picture and believed that there would be more opportunities for him in the future, which kept him going.

Before Jamie Dornan, Charlie Hunnam was finalized to play Christian Grey, but he had to drop the role due to scheduling conflicts, but Jamie Dornan shared that he felt a certain amount of relief when Charlie got the part. "I thought, 'This would have been fun, but it would have been a strange ride. Better not to be on that ride.' But he pulled out, and then I got a call. And I got it. And there we go. I had to confront that choice again", he added.

The actors have received criticism for their respective roles. Image Source: Allure

Jamie Dornan added, "Whether A Private War, Anthropoid or Belfast, or whatever comes next, the line in the press is always, 'It's the best thing he's done since Fifty Shades. As if I still need to prove myself; I am still paying penance for that choice to get me back to where I was beforehand. Look, I get it, and, to be honest with you, it spurs me on. It lights a fire in me. If that means people saying, 'Oh, actually he's not that bad,' well, so be it."

Jamie Dornan revealed that his current film, "Belfast," was written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, a national treasure and that it is a semi-autobiographical look back at the director's childhood in Northern Ireland. The story opens on August 15, 1969, just weeks after the moon landing and on the same day that riots in Dublin reached Branagh's terrace house. In comparison to many other films about this period in Irish history, the cinematic reverie is whimsical, almost glamorous; shot in rich black and white, Branagh's megawatt storytelling skills are switched on full power here, allowing us to consider this period of history from a fresh, very personal perspective. 

During the interview, Kenneth Branagh was asked his reason to choose Jamie Dornan as the leading man to which he said, "I hadn’t met him before, but I thought he was a natural leading man. He is not interested in those usual ticks that can make up so many colorful, eye-catching parts. I particularly liked him in the much-undervalued movie Anthropoid; he has a compelling way of repose, in which he thinks and reflects. Sometimes acting is about a trick of physiognomy, but mostly it’s about bringing your interior life to the camera. There is a line when Jamie, like Pa, is in the wake of his father, who has died, and he explains to Buddy that his grandfather was a very deep thinker.’ And I always felt that was true of Jamie too. He surprises you as being something more intriguing than his exceptional good looks. He was my first and only choice for the role". 

A still from Belfast. Image Source: NME 

Discussing his father, Jamie Dornan mentioned that he lost him last year to Covid and that he was such a beacon of positivity and good energy in his life and in general, and he wished he could carry that within him. Jamie Dornan added, "His death was pretty brutal. I was in quarantine in a hotel in Sydney with my whole family, with three days of quarantine [left] on the day he died, not able to leave this fucking room. And I hadn’t seen him since Christmas 2019, like so many people... Fucking dreadful."

The actor who started his career as a model mentioned that he did not love it and still does not like having his photographs taken because he finds them odd and unnatural. He shared, "It's not fun to be told continually to move your head about like it is on a swivel. 'Chin up, chin down". Although he mentions that he finds himself extremely lucky that he never had to walk the ramp because he could not handle other male models, that "hyper energy," which he later described as "douche-y as fuck." The model turned actor added, "Whenever I went on a date or met a girl in a pub or whatever, I'd say I was a landscape gardener or worked for Google - anything but admit to having my photograph taken for a living." But eventually, modeling helped him to feel comfortable around a camera.

Picture from Jamie Dornan's modeling days. Image Source: Pinterest/ Calvin Klein 

Jamie Dornan has started his production company, and he is already casting for his first project, a film set in Ireland about the rave scene. He shared, "I’ve spent a good amount of time in Belfast myself this past year, Going home, thinking about what home means to me, has given me good pause to consider what I want out of the next few years. I am going to be 40 very soon; it gives you perspective, doesn’t it? I am not afraid of that anymore. Furthermore, I’m not someone with a five-year plan."

The actor added, "If my twenties were about beginning this career, modeling, the start of acting, and my thirties were about establishing myself, then I want my forties to be about building something that will last."

Information Source: GQ British