by Louise Ford
Thankfully for Jamie, Eva was friendly and approachable – better still, he fancied her and the on-screen attraction was electric. ‘We were in Palm Springs, we had a whole week of it and it was outside and there was sun. We actually had time to get to know each other and she’s really very nice,’ Jamie said afterwards.
Single and bowled over by her natural beauty, the model was simply in awe of the actress. For Jamie this latest signing meant that he was getting ever closer to his dream of acting, since he played out the part of her on-screen lover while Klein captured every intimate move. ‘Eva is incredible – as you see her on the screen, so she is in the flesh. She’s great fun to be around, very sexy. I’d say she’s the template for how every woman should look,’ he gushed afterwards.
There was no mistaking the chemistry and Calvin Klein couldn’t have been happier with the result. Jamie too was impressed and clearly overwhelmed by the prestige of the campaign. ‘Calvin Klein Jeans and Calvin Klein Underwear are both such iconic American brands that to play a part in these campaigns is a true honour,’ he said at the launch. ‘Working alongside the sensationally sexy Eva Mendes on both shoots was incredible.’
Thousands of black-and-white shots were taken by enthusiastic Klein, as the pair performed perfectly for the camera. By the end of the week, the legendary photographer had a hoard of incredible images of the duo in a huge variety of sizzling poses, including one with Eva rubbing her bare body against Jamie and another with the actress suggestively stretching her long legs over him.
The autumn campaign of 2009 was building up to be huge, with ads scheduled to appear everywhere from billboards and bus stops to magazines and newspapers the world over, including spreads inside American titles Lucky, Elle, GQ, Vanity Fair, W, Nylon, Details, Interview and InStyle. When the ads hit the news stands, it became clear that twenty-seven-year-old Jamie’s latest fashion campaign would be going down in history as one of the most controversial yet. ‘Is Eva’s new Calvin Klein ad too revealing?’ The Insider questioned as it hit the mainstream press. ‘In a pic for the underwear ad, Eva is seen cuddling model Jamie Dornan, who only wears white undies,’ another explained. ‘Then, in another shot for the jeans ad, she is snapped getting topless. Her breasts are only covered by Jamie’s hands. Is it just too much?’ The Daily Mail moaned, ‘It’s more proof that fashion houses are pushing boundaries to extremes in order to get publicity.’ Judging by some New Yorkers’ demand that a sixty-foot billboard of the duo be pulled down immediately, the answer would be a resounding ‘yes’.
City chiefs were bombarded with complaints after the ad, showing Eva draped across Jamie with a hand on his tight-fitting pants, was pasted on the entire side of a building at a busy intersection in the city. While drivers stopped to admire the spectacle, residents claimed the board was ‘too rude for public consumption’, particularly as it could be seen by children, and demanded that it be taken down. Carl Wilson, a worker from Queens said, ‘Some of us don’t want to expose our kids to something like this – it’s borderline pornography.’ Critics also claimed that the picture suggested she was about to whip off his underwear and it was ‘out of place’ in such a prominent location. ‘It’s absolutely disgusting,’ another blogger wrote. ‘Not everyone wants to see this kind of fornication on their way to work in the morning. Someone needs to get in touch with Calvin Klein and get them to take it down, now.’
Jamie’s co-star Eva was adamant that there was nothing wrong with the ad and slammed the critics, insisting her steamy pictures with Jamie were ‘beautiful’. Pointing a finger at those who were unhappy, she said, ‘It’s a religious group that has a problem with the image […] That’s what I love about this country. We can voice our opinion and beliefs like that. But they’re wrong. I don’t think I’m traumatising any children. I think it’s a really tasteful and beautiful ad.’
For every hater, there was an admirer and Jamie’s friends were firmly in the latter camp. But while they were impressed with his latest job, they had ample material for some serious ribbing. ‘His mates call him up and tease him, there’s no way Jamie will be getting an ego about this anytime soon,’ a friend revealed. ‘They see him writhing around with a famous actress looking all serious and brooding on a billboard and the night before they were knocking back pints of Guinness together in the pub. He takes it well and enjoys the normality of it.’
His relationship with Calvin Klein was tight and Jamie found that they were giving him more and more work. In what was another positive step towards getting more screen work, the model snapped their offer to be the face of their new scent CK Free, which involved starring in a mini TV advert.
Jamie was flown to the famous Silurian dry lakebed in Baker, California, in scorching heat, along with Fabien Baron – creative director of CK Jeans – to put together the one-minute commercial short. The pair got on brilliantly as the filming got underway on the dry, desert-like landscape which seemed to spread out for miles.
In the romantic scenes, Jamie is seen driving a Mustang across the plains at sunset before getting out of the car with his arms outstretched and staring down the lens of the camera. It was a scene that was replicated by Jamie years later with his wife on their honeymoon, but for now the model was just acting out a fantasy.
The public reaction at the time was good but was even better in 2013, when he was announced as the lead role of Christian in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie and the videos were revisited by excited fans on YouTube. ‘Honestly he is Christian – he’s been real this whole time and yes they found him for us,’ fan Sabrina Beaucage wrote. ‘This is the real Christian Grey, he’s such a peach, you can tell Jamie is right for this massive film role. He will do it justice,’ penned fan Maxine Wilkie.
Jamie himself was pleased with the result; he clearly enjoyed the chance to act and do more than just pose for stills. ‘Fabien’s amazing. His mind is incredible. He’s a creative director, a stylist, a photographer, he can kind of do it all. And he’s really fun at the same time and a joy to work with,’ he said. ‘Calvin Klein are good at just letting me be me and not turning me into something else. I didn’t have to change and a lot of guys that you see in campaigns have just been taken off and look like a puppet. It’s funny because modelling was never something I wanted to happen to me,’ he added.
Whether Jamie wanted to or not, though, his modelling career was now a serious business and so lucrative that he had to make it a priority; preserving his good looks and keeping his physique toned was essential to keeping clients happy. Much to the astonishment of many colleagues, he openly admitted that he loathed going to the gym and had no fitness regime to speak of. Begrudgingly, Jamie had to start adopting a series of tried and tested exercise workouts to keep himself trim, which he squeezed in during quiet spells while on shoot. ‘There’s a lot of hanging around so I use any downtime to work on my arms and core with variations on press-ups and crunches,’ he told Men’s Health magazine soon after the Calvin Klein campaign. ‘It really is about press-ups every day. I’ll aim to do about fifty in the morning and loads more throughout the day.’
Nevertheless, the heartthrob model still had an appetite for high-calorie meals and junk food, including BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato) sandwiches and an ongoing penchant for hamburgers and fries. ‘I love a dirty burger,’ he admitted, ‘the kind where the ketchup and mayonnaise goes all over your face. That and a lot of ale. I don’t watch what I eat, I don’t understand how guys can do it. Food is so good, and if you feel bad about what you eat, go out for a run. I am obsessed with burgers as soon as I check in somewhere it’s “I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger with fries”, and I won’t talk to anybody until I’m satisfied and I’ve eaten the burger and then only then will I call them up and say “right, let’s meet up!”’
He clearly wasn’t shy about his ‘non-diet’ diet and his rider for one magazine photo shoot included ‘one bacon sandwich, one British Roast Chicken on wholemeal, one King prawn and smoked salmon baguette, a bottle of water and
a Coke to wash it down with’.
There was no time for wearing kid gloves in Jamie’s life – he wasn’t going to be precious about preserving his good looks; life was for living, as his mother and father’s cancer battles had taught him. Wild nights out drinking with his mates, surfing and some extreme ski holidays were all the order of the day, as nothing was going to stop Jamie from having a good time. ‘Work hard, play hard’ had clearly become something of a mantra for him.
However, a taste of the good life came at a cost on one snowbound mountain break when he suffered a horrendous injury in a terrifying skiing accident. An accomplished skier, Jamie was out on the mountainside when he lost control and smashed into the ice. Doubled-up in excruciating pain, hospital medics discovered that he had shattered his shoulder. Treatment was complicated and after enduring an astonishing four years of constant pain, Jamie went through a host of therapies to fix the broken bones, including two operations using keyhole surgery.
Jamie had always been insecure about his looks; he didn’t understand why the fashion industry thought he was so attractive and now lifting weights and doing push-ups left him in agony. Keeping fit was one way in which Jamie could take control of the way he looked and, for once, he would have liked nothing better than to hit the gym. ‘I have massive insecurities about how I look and will do for the rest of my life,’ he said. ‘I’m amazed if people are happy in their own skin. I see someone and I think, “F**k him, look at him, he’s got way better arms than me.”’
Even though he was one of the best-looking men in the public eye – and his position in Cosmopolitan’s Top 10 hunks proved this point – Jamie couldn’t understand how people could end up so vain, spending hours in front of the mirror preening. It just wasn’t in his make-up. ‘I’ve never understood that “my body is a temple s**t” although mine does help to pay the mortgage,’ he said some years later.
There was further frustration for Jamie, as he couldn’t stand it when people assumed that he was unintelligent and uneducated solely because of the way he looked and his job as a male model. It had reached a stage by then where his notoriety was affording him an outstanding quality of living but Jamie was becoming fed up with the price he had to pay for that: being treated like something of a village idiot. Nothing could have been further from the truth and the prejudices he faced almost daily were clearly making him anxious. ‘People assume you’re stupid enough as it is. Then you take your shirt off and they’re like, “He must be an idiot.” Seriously, people approach me and you can see it in their eyes. They speak to you very s-l-o-w-l-y. They’re like: “Let’s talk about grease and oil on your body. And aftershave. And your grooming technique.” I understand. I mean, if I saw a picture of me, I’d probably be the same.’
The reality is that he was a privately educated doctor’s son, who adored reading, playing golf, going to the theatre and skiing with his well-heeled pals. He had very few links with those inside the fashion industry, except to turn up to a photo shoot or promo – both of which were so brief that there was no time to make any firm friends. ‘I don’t really have any model friends; I have people that I kind of know but we don’t go out and talk about fashion over like an ale,’ he laughed during an interview with Nylon TV. ‘It’s not really a profession. Some people actually say they are just a model but what do you actually do? It takes up so little of your time.’
Going on to speak about where he’d really like to be, he added, ‘Every great character has already been played and played really well so you’re kind of waiting for that remix where they’re going to recast it with some skinny Irish guy – like Steve McQueen say.’ Jamie was clearly desperate for a credible acting career and pronto. The glamorous assignments hadn’t seen him resign himself to a future in modelling but instead had shifted his focus further from fashion to movie roles.
Luckily, and thanks to relentless auditions, the much hankered-for parts had started to trickle his way, even though he wasn’t going to take the easy route. Jamie knew that it would be all too simple to worm his way into the acting world by going for the roles of ‘lover’ or ‘boyfriend’, for which his career as male supermodel had already perfectly typecast him.
Unsurprisingly, nearly a decade in the fashion industry had ensured that he was fed up of playing the handsome co-star in various fashion campaigns, and being a piece of on-screen eye candy was not on his agenda. ‘I’m not going to take my shirt off every time I’m in front of the camera. It’s very accessible. Google “Jamie Dornan Torso” and there you are. I’ve done it enough that I really don’t see how it’s interesting anymore.’
Thankfully, and much to his relief, he finally secured the movie role he’d been waiting for – that of a scruffy tramp. Jamie’s agent had called to say that after a surprisingly successful audition, he had won a part in small-scale British independent movie Shadows in the Sun, and it didn’t require him to look pretty. Instead, the role was an interesting one. Jamie was to play Joe, a troubled man who lives like a vagrant but is looking after an elderly widow living in a remote house on the Norfolk coast, by bringing her cannabis to ease the pain of an illness.
It was just the break he’d been looking for, as it was completely different from the sexy roles he’d been up for previously. Set in the 1960s, the part was gritty, as Joe was a mysterious loner who was sleeping rough on the beach inside an old shipwreck. Jamie was to grow a scruffy beard for the role – a breath of fresh air for the model who usually spent hours with a team of stylists making sure that he looked immaculate for the camera. ‘It was an amazing film to be part of. It’s a very quiet little film, it’s not going to create too much of a stir. It’s set at the end of the sixties and I was able to grow a big beard for the part which I enjoyed having. I kinda miss it. I would like to grow it back again but I’m not allowed because of Calvin unfortunately.’
But best of all, the movie afforded him the unique opportunity to perform opposite eighty-year-old acting legend Jean Simmons. One of Hollywood’s brightest actresses of the 1950s, Jean’s career spanned decades and saw her act alongside Hollywood greats Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Victor Mature and Marlon Brando. The gentle family drama was to mark her return to the big screen and was sadly to be her last ever film. Working so intimately with Jean was a dream come true for Jamie; while clearly being star-struck on meeting the legendary actress, he quickly felt at ease with her, as her down-to-earth nature meant that they soon managed to form a firm friendship. They became so fond of each other, with Jamie realising he had much to learn from the star, that they kept in touch after filming finished. ‘I’m not sure what they were expecting, some Diva from Sunset Boulevard perhaps,’ said the two-time Oscar nominee, who grew up in Cricklewood in Essex before moving to Hollywood. ‘I like to think I’ve always kept a sense of reality. I think that’s down to my family and especially my brother whose attitude about me was always, “Oh good, the kid is working”,’ Jean said of her time on the film.
Jamie found the stories that she regaled to him and his co-star James Wilby deeply fascinating, particularly those of legendary actor Marlon Brando – one of his all-time heroes. ‘In a perfect world I would play Stanley in [Tennessee Williams’s play] A Streetcar Named Desire,’ Jamie had once said of his dream role, ‘but that can’t be touched; Brando did it and I don’t think they should ever re-do A Streetcar Named Desire.’
Working alongside one of Brando’s contemporaries left him ever more certain that a career in the movie industry was for him. ‘Jean was, what, seventy-nine when I worked with her? And when I think of all the films she was in, and how thoughtful and generous she was,’ he said. ‘I have to be careful here, because I was almost gonna tear up. She started as a kid. She had so many great stories. She worked with Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra – in the same movie! I’m sure she got sick of me asking her about that. She told me one of her first jobs was as Vivien Leigh’s stunt double. They rolled her up in a carpet and threw her into a pool for a scene where Vivien was to be drowne
d. She said she stayed underwater for what to her seemed like forever, but when she came up, she knew it was only a few seconds. She laughed about it, then she went from that to starring in Spartacus [1960]!’
The movie in which Jamie and Jean were now starring hinted at a time-defying romance between them despite the age gap of fifty-five years, which amused rather than embarrassed the model-turned-actor. ‘I did fall a bit in love with her actually,’ he admitted to the Evening Standard newspaper some years later.
Even after filming ended, the unlikely pals vowed to stay in touch and Jamie went for lunch at her home in Santa Monica several times before her death in January 2010, a year after the movie’s release. ‘She was one of my favourite people in the world,’ he added, ‘and it was a huge loss when she slipped away. Shadows in the Sun was her last film and she was the most incredible person. I kept in touch with Jean – she was hilarious, and had the spirit of a twenty-one-year-old right up to her final days.’
In so many ways working on the film had made a lasting impression on the young starlet and when it got a thumbsup at its premiere at the Dinard British Film Festival, he was both thrilled and relieved. Its release in UK cinemas, however, brought moderate success and reviews were varied. ‘Shadows in the Sun unfurls as quietly as a mouse and could be accused of lacking urgency and bite. But it is well played, particularly by Simmons who still has the charisma of a star turn,’ a write-up in the Evening Standard newspaper read.
