Jamie Dornan has given an extraordinary insight into his own heartbreaking childhood during The Troubles and revealed what was really going on with his marriage as he started filming Fifty Shades of Grey.
The Northern Irish star, 41, has told how he helped his obstetrician father look under the family car for bombs because he treated Catholic and Protestants mothers in Belfast in the 1980s and 1990s – and how his dad nearly delivered his own first baby.
The father-of-three said that Jim Dornan flew with him and his heavily pregnant wife Amelia Warner in case she gave birth on their way to Vancouver where he was about to play Christian Grey for the first time in November 2013.
But the actor and model revealed that his father, a celebrated doctor and academic in Belfast, decided to have four gin and tonics as soon as he knew that the baby was not going to arrive before they landed in Canada.
In an extraordinary episode of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Jamie also broke down as he described being stuck in Australia filming The Tourist when his father died from complications related to Covid-19 three years ago and ‘never got to say goodbye’. He called 2021 ‘the worst year’ of his life.
Jamie also spoke of the death of his mother Lorna, a nurse, from cancer when he was 16. He cried as he said described learning her illness was terminal and struggling with the guilt of not being able to remember everything about her.
Jamie Dornan has revealed how he and his wife Amelia Warner were expecting their first child when he got the part of Christian Grey in 2013 (pictured). She flew with him to Vancouver at 37 weeks. They hired a private jet because a commercial airline refused to take her and Jamie’s doctor dad came along in he needed to deliver the child over the Atlantic
Jamie with his late father Jim, who was a doctor who feared car bombings during The Troubles because he cared for Catholic and Protestant mothers
Jamie in the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie, which began just days after his first child arrived
Jamie Dornan left listeners in tears, and broke down himself, following his appearance on Desert Island Discs
Suffering tragedy-after-tragedy, he also lost four close friends in a car crash by the time he turned 18.
Jamie also cried again when he spoke of his wife Amelia and all she has done ‘for me and our family’. He said they met at a house party in 2010, fell in love and married in 2013. They have three daughters, Dulcie, Elva and Alberta.
Jamie said that his father, an eminent doctor who worked at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast for decades, delivered more than 6,000 babies during his career.
But as The Troubles raged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jamie revealed that as a child he would help check if his dad’s car was booby-trapped.
He also spoke of bomb scares being a normal part of his life in Northern Ireland as he grew up.
He said: ‘There were times when dad would go out checking under his car for bombs and me doing it with him thinking it was kind of funny activity, getting on your hands and knees and looking under the car’.
But the star also revealed how prominent figures on both sides of the political and religious divide later assured his father and his family would be safe so he could continue his work.
He said: ‘Dad got letters from – I can’t really name names here – but from prominent figures from the loyalist community and prominent figures from the republican community both based on difficult pregnancies that someone close to them had and dad had sort of helped them through and everything and basically saying from our side it’s all good and then from our side it’s all good.’
Jamie also revealed that his father very nearly delivered one of his daughters on a private jet crossing the Atlantic to America.
He said: ‘I got cast in Fifty Shades four weeks before the start of shooting. Amelia was 37 or 38 weeks pregnant. All our focus was on that. It was the first child.
‘All of a sudden they said I would be filming Fifty Shades in Vancouver and Millie was so pregnant she wasn’t allowed on a commercial flight, so they said they would put us in a private jet but needed an obstetrician on the plane in case she goes into labour on the way there.
‘My dad happily volunteered for that role on a trip in a private jet. Somewhere over New York, I saw dad just call over the air stewardess and order a gin and tonic.’
He said his father told him: ‘Even if she starts having contractions now, she won’t be going into active labour until we’ve landed by that point it’ll be taken into someone else’s hands anyway’.
Jamie said: ‘That was it. Dad just had four gin and tonics.’
Amelia Warner and Jamie Dornan at Paris Fashion Week on January 20
Jamie admitted he suffers from guilt for struggling to remember details about his mother Lorna (pictured), who was diagnosed with cancer when he was 14. S
Jamie pictured with his late mother and their family
Jamie being held by his mother next to his older sisters Liesa and Jessica
Jamie’s parents met in the outdoor swimming pool in the grounds at Royal Victoria Hospital (pictured). The star revealed that when it was turned into a car park his father had asked for its ladder, which he kept because that is where he saw Jamie’s mother for the first time
The actor and model admitted that his father’s own career overshadowed his, even now.
He said: ‘The amount of times people come up to me when I’m at home and I’m like, ‘now here we go, they’ll say something nice about whatever film I’ve had just come out, or whatever’, and they say ‘can I just say’ and I think ‘yeah, here we go’ and they say, ‘Your dad delivered me and my sister and my mum always talked about how much she fancied your dad’ – and I’m like ‘listen that’s lovely’.’
Amelia Warner and Jamie Dornan attend the 27th Annual Critics Choice Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on March 13, 2022. The couple met at a house party
His parents met whole working together at the Royal Victoria Hospital while taking a dip in the staff outdoor pool.
It was later concreted over but his father rescued the steps because that is the first place he ever saw his future wife.
Jamie said on Desert Island Discs: ‘Now at the Royal Victoria Hospital there is a giant car park but back in the day there was an outdoor swimming pool that was for the staff. Dad was in the pool and he saw a beautiful brunette climbing out of the pool and that was my mother.
‘And when the plans passed for the car park, they were about to fill in the swimming pool and Dad happened to be driving through the hospital and got out and, in a very Dad kind of way, went and found the head guy with the hard hat on and said ‘listen, what’s the craic with the steps?’
When the workman said they would be thrown away his dad said: ‘I’d love to keep the steps’. So he had the steps propped up against the shed in our garden for years that he’d first saw my mum on’, Jamie said.
The actor and model admitted that his father’s own career overshadowed his, even as a Hollywood star.
He said: ‘The amount of times people come up to me when I’m at home and I’m like, ‘now here we go, they’ll say something nice about whatever film I’ve had just come out, or whatever, and they say ‘can I just say’ and I say ‘yeah, here we go’ and they say, ‘Your dad delivered me and my sister and my mum always talked about how much she fancied your dad’ – and I’m like ‘listen that’s lovely’.’
Laughing, he told Desert Island Discs host Lauren Laverne: ‘It’s been a lovely thing, since we lost dad a couple of years back, it’s a huge comfort’.
Jamie Dornan poses for Calvin Klein Underwear. He had his breakthrough as a model but became an actor. One of his campaigns was branded disgusting by a New Yorker in front of him,. Jamie revealed
Pictured: Jim Dornan with his daughter Jessica, centre, and son Jamie, far right, in 2018 during a pancreatic cancer charity event in Belfast
Jamie admitted he suffered from guilt for struggling to remember details about his mother Lorna, who was diagnosed with cancer when he was 14.
The Tourist star said he was ‘thankful’ to his obstetrician father Jim who had told him straight that his mother Lorna ‘wasn’t going to survive’.
He said: ‘I am sort of thankful it was told to me straight like that. It’s a funny thing. I sometimes feel guilty saying this, but there’s a lot I don’t remember about her. You are not expecting any of that to be taken away.’
He added: ‘My dad, I remember him saying “you can’t let this be the thing that defines us” and I’m really grateful for those words.’
‘He was trying to say that you can live a fulfilled, positive and happy life still, now that doesn’t lessen the impact of losing mum or anything but I guess it was just dad giving us the okay to see happiness in our future.’
Around the same time, Jamie suffered several other tragic losses as four of his friends were killed in a car crash which left him feeling ‘shock and denial’.
He went to Teesside University in England but dropped out.
Discussing the time of his life, he said: ‘I drank a lot. I was probably depressed if I’m really honest with myself, and just clueless about what I wanted to do.
‘I remember my dad saying ‘you’ve just got to do something, I don’t care if you just go and play golf every day because at least it’s productive, at least you’re trying to get better at golf, you’re just doing nothing, and I can’t watch it’,’
His big break when he started modelling in his early twenties after one of his sisters entered him into a reality show. Within months he had an agent was working in the US, finding fame as an underwear model.
He said: ‘I was walking through New York and I’d done this Calvin Klein campaign and there’s a massive billboard with Natalia Vodianova. We’re on this like black sand beach and she’s pulled down my Calvin Klein jeans and she’s basically taking a bite out of my a**e. Or looking like she’s about to do that. And I just looked up and saw it for the first time and I was like ‘Oh my God’, and as I looked up there’s a woman beside me went ‘that’s disgusting!’ [laughs] And I went ‘that’s me, that’s actually me. That’s my bum and that’s my face.’.’
He met his wife Amelia in California. The musician and composer had previously ‘married’ another actor in Tahiti back in 2003 – Colin Farrell.
However it was not a legal ceremony, and they they ended the relationship four months later.
Jamie found fame as an actor in The Fall. And then took on the role of Christian Grey in erotic thriller Fifty Shades of Grey, becoming a global star.
But it was panned by critics and he went into ‘hiding’ to escape the ridicule heaped on his starring role.
He and his wife shut themselves off from the world in a bid escape the near universal ‘damnation’ which greeted the film’s release in 2015.
‘I think I hid. I am coming off the back of career altering reviews for The Fall to just ridicule almost.’
Dornan said he and his wife Amelia retreated to the country home of the film’s director Sam Taylor-Johnson and her actor husband Aaron.
He said: ‘They let us have their place in the country and we sort of hid there for a while and just shut ourselves from the world a bit and then sort of came out the other side.’
The star who went onto make two more films in the series said: ‘It [the film] made so much money that two or three were like greenlit overnight.
‘It was a strange thing because then you are like there is a bit of ridicule here and I’m now contractually doing two more of them and knowing that there would be more of that damnation to come.’
Fifty Shades of Grey just like the 2011 novel on which it is based explores the sadomasochistic relationship between college graduate Anastasia Ana Steele, played by Dakota Johnson and the enigmatic tycoon Christian Grey, played by Dornan.
Although the film was a huge commercial hit taking more than five hundred million dollars at the international box office it was savaged by critics.
Dornan who subsequently went onto to win rave reviews for his starring roles in Belfast and The Tourist said he had no regrets about making the thriller even though he was constantly being reminded of its failings.
He said: ‘I have just had very glowing reviews for recent work and there wouldn’t be many of them that don’t mention ‘Fifty Shades’ in them. A lot of reviews are like he’s great but lest we forget when he wasn’t great…But regrets that I did them, no.’
His first proper role was as Widow Twankey in a school production of Aladdin, when he was 10.
He said: ‘We had an amazing cleaner called Nelly Morgan, who was a formidable woman. She lived in a place called Short Strand which was a very infamous part of Belfast because it’s a Nationalist Republican estate right on the edge of a predominantly Loyalist part of East Belfast.
‘It was a dangerous place. I don’t think Nelly Morgan would have ever been scared in her life – she was just unbelievable – and she used to walk from there, six miles, to clean for us and when you offered her a lift if we were like ‘look we’re heading up the road to Belfast now’ she’d usually say no.
‘She was just brilliant – I just loved her – and I said, ‘Look I’m playing Widow Twankey and I’m going to steal some of your traits basically’.’
He added: ‘A big regret is – and I don’t know why or how it happened, they were probably just very stingy with tickets but she didn’t come to see the performing thing, we did two performances of it. But I won the drama prize and I was very smug. I guess it was my first sense of getting a sense of satisfaction from performance’.
Since his 2013 breakout role playing serial killer Paul Spector in BBC drama The Fall opposite Gillian Anderson, Dornan has starred in the Fifty Shades Of Grey trilogy with Dakota Johnson; Sir Kenneth Branagh’s critically acclaimed film Belfast and BBC hit series The Tourist.
The Northern Irish said experiencing loss at a young age made him a ‘pretty determined person’, but also said he is ‘massively’ riddled with self-doubt.
‘I think you need a huge amount of confidence and self-belief to be an actor and to perform in front of everybody, and often I find actors are the most riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing,’ he said.
‘I’m pretty good at convincing myself and backing myself and I do think that can get you far, I’m happier with my self-doubt because it always gives you something to prove.’
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