The Guardian - From a killer in The Fall to the S&M hero of Fifty Shades of Grey, Jamie Dornan is poised for superstardom. But, asks Benji Wilson, will he ever be free of his pants-modelling past?
Acting is a strange way to make a living, but you can pick up all kinds of skills on the job. In recent months, for example, Jamie Dornan has become particularly good with knots. When we meet in London he is on a break from filming a second series of The Fall in Belfast, in which he plays a serial killer who ties up his victims. Before that he was in Vancouver filming the big-screen adaptation of EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey. Dornan plays the lead, Christian Grey, a man who also practises a bit of rope work, though in his case, as part of consensual S&M. In fact, the only time Dornan has been able to stop the tethering in 11 months of relentless filming has been playing Abe Goffe in Peter Flannery's Restoration drama, New Worlds.
"There are a couple of classic knots I know now," says the 31-year-old,
"and I've put them to good use far too many times recently. In fact I'd like to do a job where I don't have to tie women to beds."
Two years ago, Dornan was a member of one of entertainment's most derided subspecies, the actor-slash-model. A boy from Belfast who'd struck it lucky and wound up working with Bruce Weber and Calvin Klein, he had always wanted to act, so went to the US for pilot season: LA's annual casting meat market – the recollection of which, he tells me, makes him feel physically sick.
Expecting to book more love interest roles in chintzy dramas like Once Upon a Time, he was instead called back to audition for The Fall in the UK. Allan Cubitt's startling script turned out to be BBC2's biggest drama launch in years, largely thanks to the warped ying and yang of Gillian Anderson as a frosty detective set against Dornan as Paul Spector, caring therapist by day, rapist and murderer by night. Dornan has a natural, fidgety intensity –
"a doctor once told me I have abnormal levels of adrenaline in my system" – and in The Fall he showed that he could twist the same pent-up fervour that was sexy in a Calvin Klein campaign into something deeply unnerving. Last month his performance earned him a Bafta best actor nomination.
Meanwhile, British actor Charlie Hunnam, who had been cast to play Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, pulled out, and Dornan replaced him, awaiting whatever slings and arrows EL James's adoring readership will lob at him when Sam Taylor-Wood's film is released early next year. There is also the small matter of a one-year-old marriage, to the singer Amelia Warner, and a five-month-old daughter.