IS IT CHRISTMAS YET?!

Well, that’s how any fan of Jamie Dornan’s felt this morning, and not just because of the snow. His fans woke up to an overwhelming number of photos and a beautifully written article by L’Uomo Vogue for their October edition. Read the article below!

Jamie Dornan may best be known for his role as emotionally distant BDSM-obsessed billionaire Christian Grey, in the film adaption of “Fifty Shades of Grey”. A film that’s been steeped in polarizing but feverish anticipation and grown into an outright cultural phenomenon – and the same could be said of Jamie himself. The trailer for the sequel, “Fifty Shades Darker”, has just been released to equal measures of hysteria: within the first 24 hours, the trailer alone broke world records and garnered over 114 million views. Then there’s “The Fall”, the critically acclaimed BBC series, which sees Jamie play the role of another psychopath: Paul Spector, a sadistic, sexually-motivated serial killer-cum-family-man. “The Fall has been very good to me and given the opportunity, I’d play that character for the rest of my life”, Jamie says, met with some intrigue. “It’s kind of awkward to say, as he’s such a horrible person but I do care for him and inhabiting his very sick mind for some reason”, he affirms. But after meeting Jamie, who in real life, oozes Irish charm, warmth and charisma, it’s hard to imagine there could be an ounce of malice inside the real him.

Jamie was born in Holywood, Northern Ireland, a small coastal town closely-spelled and aptly pro- nounced Hollywood, which he wouldn’t change for the world. “I had a really fucking lovely, very middle class sort of serene upbringing despite the madness that was happening in our country at the time”, he says, “I wouldn’t have changed any aspect of my childhood. I mean, I lost my mother when I was 16 so of course I would change that, but you know in terms of my actual child- hood, people are amazing back home”. The 34-year-old former Calvin Klein model eventually left the confines of Holywood and moved to London to pursue a career in modelling, where he eventually fell in to acting: “I did a lot of acting in school and did amateur dramatics back in Ireland. It always intrigued me, I always enjoyed doing it but then saying “I want that to pay the mortgage” is a very different thing”, he says, now living between West London and his country house in the Cotswolds with his wife, Amelia Warner, and their two children. “I find London quite stressful to raise my kids. We like to be able to leave our door open and let our three-year-old run in the garden and muck around and express herself”, he says affectionately, with not an inch of psychopathy in sight.

But his latest role, as charismatic Commandant Pat Quinlan, in “The Siege of Jadotville”, is probably his hardest to date. The film follows the Irish army’s inconceivably little known yet heroic battle against Belgian mercenaries, in the brutal Congolese civil war of 1961. Playing the man at the helm of a courageous but untold war (that’s finally getting the biopic it deserves) comes with a lot of expectations. “It’s huge in a way and I had to carry that with me but not let it burden me”, he says, “I had a weird thing with Jadotville, as I played Pat, and his real grandson Conor plays one of the ten guys that’s focused on within the film. Having Pat’s actual grandson by my side everyday was really daunting”. The film, which was shot across Ireland and Johannesburg, saw Jamie and the predominantly male cast move to the South African city for two and a half months. “Any time there was a female, as there was only two featured in the film, I felt so sorry for them, they’d step into this very male environment. Huge testosterone levels!”, he says. “A lot of Irish guys and a couple token English dudes made up the cast and they were all either single or they’d been away from their girlfriends for so long. So when the guys were leering over these women, I felt very happy to be married and have my family out there and not lose my mind!”

Although they finished shooting the film a little over a year ago, the cast are still closer than ever. “We did this two week boot camp when we first arrived. We were going on these horrible runs together, carrying heavy rifles and running through the desert and vomiting in front of each other”, he says, “then we were having to do press-ups pretty close to the vomit. That vibe really bonded us all together!”. It’s easy to see why Jamie is easy-going, insanely likeable and despite his globally acknowledged sex appeal, he’s still managed to retain that humble boy-next-door sweetness. He even set up a WhatsApp group just to stay in touch with the boys. “It’s quite telling that it’s been over a year and no-one has left the group yet. I’m the group admin!”, he says proudly. When I tell him that this could be his biggest responsibility to date, he wryly smiles back: “It’s the biggest. It’s huge!”

You can view all of the images from the article, shot by Norman Jean Roy in our gallery.

Credit to L’Uomo Vogue for the article in its entirety.

Photo by: Norman Jean Roy

Text by: Samira Larouci

Fashion Editor: Robert Rabensteiner