The endlessly amiable Jamie Dornan was, of course, talking to me before a certain strike began. You couldn’t find a fellow less likely to scab. We will touch on the writers’ stoppage later, but back in the sunlit uplands of mid-June few people had any sense how consequential the actors’ dispute with the studios would prove. Right now Dornan is mainly concerned with missing Father’s Day at home with his three children.
“It’s bittersweet right now that I’m not with the kids,” he says. “They made me a video, which I just watched. I teared up in the toilet before we started this.”
Given subsequent developments it would be foolish to suggest nothing stops the publicity machine, but, at time of jawing, Dornan can’t escape publicity duties for his new Netflix action flick Heart of Stone. Not that, Father’s Day aside, he seems to mind. The actor, now an implausible 41, has always managed to enter the room as if strolling into a south Belfast pub. He doesn’t much complain. He understands he’s got it better than most. He and Amelia Warner, a busy musician, have been married for 10 years. During that time he has gone from being a top model who did some telly to a genuine movie star.
It’s a juggling act.
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“To be honest with you, Donald, I am very lucky to have a bit of a choice over work situations – when and where I work,” he says. “I thank Whomever every day for that. I’m working away from my family at the moment – albeit in Dublin. I’m flying home to London every weekend and they’ve come over a couple of times already. So that’s all doable. We try to have a two-week rule. I have broken that only once over 10 years of being parents.”
Dornan has, indeed, been shooting series two of the BBC series The Tourist in the capital this summer. Before that he was all over the world for Heart of Stone. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Sophie Okonedo, the Netflix production – a breathless spy romp in the Mission: Impossible school – touched down in Iceland, Northern Italy and Portugal. You could get jet lag just watching the thing from your couch.
There is one stable point. He gets to hold on to his own accent. There seems no obvious reason for Gadot’s sidekick to be from the Lisburn area. But I imagine it makes life a bit easier for Dornan.
“I think originally he was English,” he says. “But I think it added something to it and also, selfishly, it’s much easier if I turn up and I am not grappling with an accent. Ha ha!’
He came to the production shortly after the awards whirlwind that was Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. That film, in which he played a variation on the director’s father, arrived at the Telluride Film Festival in 2021 with little buzz. Following a triumphant premiere, the cast worked the interview circuit all the way to seven Oscar nominations and one win. It might have been a relief to get back to blowing up helicopters in the Alps.
“I was just finishing the madness of Belfast and all the promotion and all the awards stuff,” he confirms. “I think I said yes to this two or three days before the Academy Awards. I was with Ken Branagh every day and he’d been with Gal on Death on the Nile and said only good things. I had a lot of people telling me she was brilliant. So it was great to turn up and discover she was.”
You can’t really train for this sort of challenge. We know there are wires. We know there are computer graphics. We know there are stunt people. But this still looks pretty physical. You could do a mischief shooting a film like Heart of Stone.
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“I did get hurt a wee bit,” he says. “Nothing bad. Nothing that would make you not be able to work the next day. But I’m someone who likes to throw himself around a bit. I come from a rugby background. I enjoy the physical side of it. I got to do a lot in this – often in what felt like quite confined close spaces. We had a fight in a cable car that we shot for a very long time. You’ll be bumped. You’ll have bumps and bruises by the end of the day. But I like that. I’m someone who would train naturally even if I didn’t need to be in good nick for something.”
And on he rumbles in his unpretentious fashion. The son of much-admired obstetrician Prof Jim Dornan – who, sadly, died due to Covid complications in 2021 – Jamie was raised in the Belfast suburbs and educated at Methodist College (“Methody” to all in the city). There were hardships. His mum died of cancer when he was just 16. “The grief hit me in waves for years,” he later remarked.
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He studied for a while at Teeside University, but dropped out with the notion of becoming an actor. Dornan’s first breakthrough came as a model for the likes of Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein and Armani. That hugely successful early career shaded into acting with roles in the TV fantasy Once Upon a Time and then, opposite Gillian Anderson, in The Fall for the BBC. The spanky Fifty Shades of Grey pushed him to another level in 2015.
He hasn’t had as much opportunity in rollicking action flicks as you might expect. But he seems very much at home with the comic-book violence. (Whisper it gently: he may still be just young enough to replace Daniel Craig in that unfilled James Bond role.)
“To be honest with you my whole premise – the basis of me dressing up to play other people for a living – is the opportunity to do that in different scenarios, different worlds, different genres,” he says. “I feel really lucky I’ve done a pretty broad range of stuff so far in my career. I’ve loved trying to find comfort in mad comedy. I’ve loved finding comfort in playing psychopaths. I’m trying to find comfort in good people and bad people. Very dramatic stuff. Very silly stuff. For me that’s what it’s about.”
I didn’t work the first three months of the year. So I was doing every school run, every pickup
Dornan has managed to work a fair bit in Ireland. Never forget he made the… shall we say “much-discussed” Wild Mountain Thyme in Mayo just before the pandemic. The Fall was shot in Belfast. Was that a conscious decision? I imagine he could easily have allowed Hollywood (as opposed to Holywood, Co Down, where he was born) to suck him lucratively across the Atlantic.
“I think you do your best work when you’re relaxed. And there is nothing more relaxing than being around people who understand your humour, understand your accent, who fall in line with your ethos. Obviously, because I’m from there, that happens on that island. I’m not saying you can’t have a great time filming and pick up on different cultures all around the world. That is brilliant. But there’s nothing like being surrounded by people that you grew up surrounded by. That’s a big thing. I have made a point of working in Ireland, North and South. I will always seek that out, because it’s important to tell stories from home.”
Way back in June we were talking about the possibility of him getting some time off. Space precludes a full examination what parts actors are not allowed to take during the actors’ strike. You’re probably okay on British TV. Promotional work around a Netflix production like Heart of Stone is a different matter. By the stage of our chat, however, the Writers Guild of America had already been on strike for a month and a half. Dornan was making early adjustments. Any chance to get back to the family is greedily grabbed.
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“When I’m off, I’m off,” he tells me. “You know what I mean? Like really off! I didn’t work the first three months of the year. So I was doing every school run, every pickup. When I finish this job I was planning – slightly induced by the writers’ strike – to take some time off. The thing I was meant to start looks like it’s kicking into next year. So then I will spend loads of time with them. But it’s a constant battle.”
And today offers particular pressures?
“It’s Father’s Day and I am not with them. That’s tough,” he says. “But when I am there I am really, really there. And I love that.”
Heart of Stone streams on Netflix from August 11th
