Fifty Shades of Jamie Dornan

by Louise Ford

  Family ties were still strong and Jamie continued to make regular visits home to Belfast, often with Amelia in tow, whose down-to-earth nature would have been a hit with his dad and stepmother. Jamie’s much-loved older sisters Liesa and Jessica – one working for Disney and the other mother to two babies under the age of three – were still close at hand, too, living in London and Cornwall.

  It was a blessed life indeed and back home in London Jamie and Amelia enjoyed nights in watching trash TV, with Amelia ‘loving’ The X Factor and Jamie admitting to watching The Real Housewives of… series on Bravo. ‘My enjoyment of “Don’t Tell The Bride” is worryingly slipping from ironic to genuine…time to turn off the TV,’ Amelia tweeted in 2011.

  The pair also shared a love for Elvis and a memorable, if not unusual, night out for the couple towards the end of that year was seeing crooner Engelbert Humperdinck perform at London’s Royal Albert Hall. ‘It was a really random night, but I had the best night, it was amazing. He had his shirt unbuttoned, he had a fan on him, in between songs he told jokes and stories about Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. He was incredible,’ Amelia recounted in an interview. ‘The Man, The Legend, Engelbert Humperdinck. Cannot say enough. What a hero!’ Jamie tweeted the following morning.

  Intimate details of their two-year relationship were also offered up to online blog The London Chatter by Amelia, who painted a picture of comfortable days in and cosy nights out with ‘my love’ aka Jamie Dornan. ‘I’m not a huge fan of the cocktail so [a drink out] would have to be a pint of Guinness at The Coach and Horses in Soho with some lovely friends,’ she revealed. ‘Date night would be spaghetti pomodoro, red wine and candlelight at The Ripe Tomato on All Saints Road with my love. Brunch is at home with the papers, Bloody Marys and my friend Markus’s home fries. Secret place – Cork and Bottle, a very old fashioned wine bar hidden and tucked away under the craziness of Leicester Square – perfect for a late dinner.’

  The following year saw a romantic trip to Paris and a joint ‘obsession’ with the Olympics, which were hosted in London. Jamie seemed particularly enthralled as the Olympic flame passed by their London house and admitted that he would be watching the Games avidly on TV.

  Another big step for the duo saw them buy a second home in the Cotswolds: a rural retreat in the Oxfordshire countryside popular with the rich and famous, including model Kate Moss, Liz Hurley, Lily Allen and Hugh Grant. Picture-perfect and an ideal place to raise a future family, ‘it’s to get away from London at the weekend,’ Jamie said of the cottage in 2012, ‘so that’s two mortgages.’ For the model-turned-actor a countryside hideaway was perhaps justly needed. Having struck lucky with his Once Upon a Time role, Jamie had also landed a part in gritty BBC2 drama The Fall, and this time he was to play the lead. Despite this and being on the cusp of worldwide fame, though, Jamie was adamant that the paparazzi wouldn’t be interested in their life. ‘I’m a thirty-one-year-old not twenty-one. I don’t leave clubs at 5 am. Who would be interested in a nerd like me? Honestly, when I hear that I’m cute and charming I feel like a French bulldog,’ he said. ‘My level of fame,’ he added in another interview, ‘has no impact on my life.’

  It was true to say that, aside from their two homes, everything about the couple was distinctly ‘normal’, with not a hint of living like the stereotypical Hollywood stars. ‘I despise extravagance. I do not fly a private plane. I do not have bodyguards and I do not buy branded stuff. I have a house, two dogs, a watch. That’s good enough for me,’ Jamie told Polish Glamour magazine.

  He also loathed the idea of being famous, as did Amelia, who by 2013 had undergone another career change after her music career had fizzled out. She had now achieved another childhood ambition of opening a clothes shop. Called ‘Found and Vision’, and selling vintage ‘fashion, furniture and finds’, the store was popular with fashionistas and A-listers alike, such as Kate Moss, Sienna Miller, singer Florence Welch and London IT girl Mary Charteris. It was handily located just around the corner from their Notting Hill home. ‘Found and Vision is one of London’s infamous vintage boutiques. Set in the heart of Golborne Road, the boutique is awash with treasures from Ossie Clark to Lanvin,’ i-D magazine raved.

  Amelia, who had loved fashion and the Bohemian-esque area of Kensal Rise ever since moving there aged four, seemed as happy and personally fulfilled as Jamie, who was taking great strides in his acting career. She had also been welcomed with open arms into the Dornan family and a future together seemed unquestionable.

  True to form, Jamie proposed and much to their loved ones’ delight their marriage day was set for 27 April 2013. It was to be an intimate wedding at trendy retreat Babington House in Somerset, surrounded by close family and friends.

  The country house hotel – an offshoot of London’s media hang-out Soho House – was a popular wedding venue with A-listers thanks to its privacy within eighteen acres of British countryside and an eighteenth century chapel for the ceremony itself, followed by a luxury champagne wedding reception in its critically acclaimed restaurant. Couples who had previously married at the stunning retreat included comedian James Corden and Julia Carey, Fat Boy Slim and Zoe Ball, and Amanda Holden and Chris Hughes.

  With the day set and preparations underway, Jamie, who had recently endured months of filming, enjoyed a much-needed break with his future bride. Four months before the April nuptials, the pair splashed out on a sun-kissed beach holiday in Miami. The couple were seen playfully cuddling in the sea, with Jamie in red trunks and Amelia looking striking in a white triangle bikini and her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. ‘Jamie and Amelia are clearly a couple in love, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other while swimming in the sea together. Both were tanned and beautifully turned out, they’re the kind of couple glossy magazines would be fighting over to have grace their pages,’ an onlooker remarked.

  It was just as well the couple had grabbed a break while they could, as the lead-up to the wedding was fraught. A week before the marriage, Jamie was in the thick of a massive publicity drive, as the smash-hit crime drama The Fall was due to launch on BBC2 in a month’s time. Jamie was winning rave reviews for his portrayal of a doting father turned psycho killer in the chilling series and just when he was hoping to wind down for the biggest day of his life, press requests were coming in thick and fast. ‘We meet Jamie Dornan the week before his wedding,’ a journalist for the Sunday Times wrote. ‘His wayfarers and phone are on the table. Just 31 he is currently appearing in his first BBC drama. Family must be next – it’s all coming together for the former model.’

  Indeed, everything seemed to be happening at once. Jamie had spent the evening before the Sunday Times interview writing his wedding speech in a diner on Portobello Road and had burst into tears. Although a big day in any groom’s life, for Jamie it was going to be particularly emotional. While he had finally found the girl of his dreams, the woman who raised him, his beloved mother, wouldn’t be there to witness it. It was also a unique chance to bring all those he loved and cherished together in one place to celebrate his love for Amelia; as well as dad Jim, stepmother Samina and sisters Liesa and Jessica, eight of Jamie’s groomsmen were his friends from back home. ‘Holywood is where my heart is,’ Jamie admitted.

  His childhood pals had already done him proud with a two-day stag do in Berlin. Determined to give Jamie the perfect send-off from bachelorhood to married man, all nineteen of his invited friends went on a beer bike, which involved pedalling a mini pub on wheels around the German city while ‘knocking back barrels of beer’. It was a ‘brilliant craic’, as the actor admitted afterwards.

  When Jamie and Amelia’s big day finally came around, the setting couldn’t have been more perfect. Coincidentally, the nuptials were held just two weeks before Jamie’s ex Keira Knightley wed Klaxons singer James Righton in a romantic ceremony in France, which was splashed across the world’s press. Thankfully for Jamie, his big day went by virtually unnoticed, despite the attendance of a clutch of TV celebrities such
as his Once Upon A Time co-stars Ginnifer Goodwin, Josh Dallas and Jennifer Morrison.

  Once they were husband and wife, and following the weekend celebrations, Jamie and Amelia immediately set about achieving another all-time dream: a honeymoon driving across America in a convertible Mustang. In a five-week ‘honeymoon to end all honeymoons’ the newly-weds drove from California to New York in a scene right out of the CK Free advert he shot in the year they met. The romantic trip saw Jamie drive 6,000 miles – ‘We were taking our time to do it,’ he later admitted – with highlights including driving through the West Virginia mountains and visiting Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, which for the actor was ‘a dream come true’. ‘It was like a movie, it did feel like that at times. A convertible Mustang makes a lot of sense when you’re in California but less so as you head further East!’ Jamie told breakfast TV show Daybreak on his return. ‘You know you grow up just wanting to do that kind of trip and a few people said, “Oh you’ll regret it if you don’t go and lie on a beach for two weeks,” but you can’t do this forever if you know what I mean, this was a once in a lifetime thing.’

  It was a welcome break from months of hard slog but even on the open road, Jamie couldn’t help thinking about work, particularly since his new show The Fall had premiered while he was away. ‘It was strange being away with the first three episodes of The Fall coming out though,’ he said. ‘No one likes to bother you on your honeymoon but I was thinking, “It’s been on for thirty seconds and no one’s been in touch”.’

  The honeymoon period continued back home in London and Jamie’s wife was a hit – everyone who met them seemed to be enchanted by her charm and beauty. Actress Bronagh Waugh, who played Jamie’s wife Sally Ann in The Fall, said, ‘I introduced myself to Amelia saying “You’re the hot wife, I’m the not-so-hot wife.” She’s just lovely, he’s very lucky to have her.’

  ‘Jamie is absolutely besotted with her and so are we all,’ a friend of the newly-weds said, ‘she is literally the most perfect person imaginable for him.’ What would make their life together even more complete was a family and a few days before his wedding, Jamie admitted that he was ready to take on the challenge of fatherhood. ‘I want to have all that. I’d say I’m pretty ready, I want to experience it when I’m still young,’ he said.

  Nothing seemed to be out of Jamie’s grasp and behind closed doors not only was a baby on the way but a Hollywood film career playing a certain Christian Grey was in the making too. For the time being, though, the actor had his first major TV role to promote and finally, thanks to playing the part of a cold-blooded killer, Jamie was thrilled to see that his pretty-boy model image had been turned on its head for good. Even his wife, home from their honeymoon, was left traumatised after watching him in one particularly gripping episode of The Fall. ‘My wife hadn’t seen the third episode so we watched it together [after the wedding]. She was a little bit wary of me for about half-an-hour after it finished,’ he said. ‘I had to win back her trust.’

  A friend of theirs also admitted that she felt uneasy in his presence after watching the show. ‘It’s the last effect I want from a friend, but I’m glad,’ he said. The reaction was praise indeed and Jamie was justifiably proud of himself; The Fall had been exhausting, psychologically challenging and one of the best experiences in his thirty-one years of life. And, like everything, it seemed that he hadn’t quite expected it…

  Chapter Thirteen

  A KILLER DAD

  ‘I auditioned to play a smaller role in “The Fall”, a detective. I never think auditions have gone well, but with this one I actually did think I did a good job. Then I didn’t hear anything for a couple of weeks.’ Baffled by his misjudgement, the model-turned-actor decided to try his luck elsewhere and jetted to Los Angeles for pilot season. He had booked himself a hire car and apartment at the other end and was bracing himself for a month of thankless auditions. However, as soon as he landed in Tinseltown, he got an excited call from his agent saying that the BBC wanted him back in London right away to read for a different part. ‘That usually means it’s some really tiny, insignificant part, but it was completely the opposite, which never happens,’ Jamie explained.

  Writer Allan Cubitt, known previously for award-winning TV series Murphy’s Law and Prime Suspect, had seen Jamie’s first audition and wanted him to try out for the lead role: a grief counsellor turned serial killer called Paul Spector. The crime drama set in Belfast – a co-production for RTE and the BBC – was already being earmarked to be a hit by excited TV critics. Jamie was gobsmacked by the offer. ‘Then the fear sets in. Do I take offence that whatever I did in the room, trying to play a detective, they saw the serial killer in me? Is that a compliment? Then there was the proper fear – I’m going to get fired at the table read, and they’ll realise they’ve got it completely wrong,’ he told the Sunday Times.

  It was a complex role and Cubitt, along with the show’s producers, which included Belgian director Jakob Verbruggen – who had worked on US drama The Bridge – needed to be certain that they hired the right actor for the job. In the five-part series, Paul Spector works as a grief counsellor by day, hiding behind the façade that he’s the perfect family man: a dad-of-two and a devoted husband. In his other life, as he sketches grisly images in a diary and hides his butchering tools above his daughter’s bed, Spector is stalking the streets of Belfast, plotting and carrying out the gruesome murders of professional women.

  Whoever was going to fill the role would have a challenge on their hands, having to convey two completely different characters in one. ‘Paul Spector was a conundrum,’ one newspaper explained. ‘We saw him strangle women in the night then make his two young children breakfast in the morning. He would hover in doorways and slip through windows to attack his victims a terrifying figure who loomed over the screen and would then settle into an armchair and offer bereavement counselling at work a few hours later, sometimes without having been to bed in between.’

  The checklist for casting Spector also included employing an actor who could star opposite actress Gillian Anderson, as she had already landed the role of detective. Best known for her longstanding character of Special Agent Dana Scully in sci-fi show The X Files, her character in The Fall – DSI Stella Gibson – is sent to Belfast to solve Spector’s high-profile murder case. Therefore, finding someone who had an acting style to compliment hers was key. ‘Gillian was first choice for the part of detective. She is extremely minimal in what she does, very internalised, very thoughtful, very unshowy,’ creator Cubitt explained. ‘So I knew I needed someone who could match that.’

  While there had initially been pressure on the show’s producers to cast a bigger name than Dornan for Spector, Cubitt went against the grain and argued that it was more important to have someone the right age, since statistically most serial killers are in their late twenties. Within minutes of Jamie walking back into the audition room, Cubitt knew he was the right man for the job. The casting panel had chosen a scene where Spector, who had returned back home from a voyeuristic burglary, goes to his children, whom he had left alone and asleep while his wife worked a night shift as a nurse. Much to the room’s delight, Dornan’s interpretation was chilling. ‘Some people were playing it as if he wanted to murder his child but Jamie came in and spoke very kindly to the boy, then kissed his daughter goodnight, and that’s more disconcerting for the audience,’ he explained.

  Although Jamie may have wanted to forget his years of modelling in the acting studio, they had clearly taught him some essential skills, such as being able to portray a feeling and emotion solely through his face and body language. As the old proverb goes, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ – Jamie was master of communicating a whole range of emotions to his audience with just one powerful look. He was measured and poised and although Cubitt realised that he had struck gold, he now had to convince the people further up the chain that this ex-model was the right choice. ‘I had in my mind someone who is very still in what they did and who
the audience would project quite complex feelings to. Jamie had that quality where he was watchful where he didn’t reveal very much about himself and bit by bit you were drawn into trying to decipher what sort of person he was,’ the writer explained.

  Even Jamie was stunned at how sinister he looked when he later watched himself playing the killer on screen. ‘Everyone in the process of casting me must always have seen that darkness in me. Yet I’m not sure I even saw it myself. Basically, it must have been inside me, which is kind of worrying,’ he said.

  For Jamie, it was a dream role and the script was one of the best he’d ever read. It wasn’t long before he was told that the part was his. He was in good company too, along with Gillian Anderson, Bronagh Waugh – best known for playing Cheryl Brady in Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks – who was to play his on-screen wife SallyAnn, and Irish actress Laura Donnelly, who had been cast as a female solicitor targeted by the killer.

  Jamie was sent the script and even before the shock of landing the part had worn off, he started working on developing the character. ‘I thought I was in over my head when they cast me. It was tough, really tough, and not an easy place to have your head in,’ he told the Radio Times. ‘I was all “time for the fun to start. Let the research begin. Let me only start reading about unspeakably horrific men.”’

  Jamie focused on round-the-clock research into psychopaths, as he tried to get inside Spector’s mind. He started reading books, watching films and digging out interviews that would give an insight into how a cold-blooded killer thinks and operates. As days turned into weeks, it was clear that Jamie’s preparations for the drama were starting to have an effect on his psyche. ‘I didn’t read anything other than innocent death and it does affect you, big time,’ he said. ‘It’s not a good mindset to be in for any real length of time.’