Fifty Shades of Jamie Dornan (10 page)

While others seemed mystified by it, Jamie didn’t really care about his single status, since professionally he was on a roll. Perhaps the best part of his current occupation was that modelling shoots that lasted only a day or two, funded him for months and left him free to do what he actually wanted to do: music. ‘If I am doing a film I might have to take time out from being in the recording studio as I might be away on set. But when it comes to modelling it isn’t like you’re away on month-long assignments – it doesn’t take that long to take a photo,’ he explained. ‘You’re only away for two or three days here and there and a lot of the time you’re in London anyway. I find it easy to balance things – and I still have a lot of spare time to do nothing.’

Not that he had time to do ‘nothing’; Jamie was very busy indeed.

‘
T
his boy is a veritable model slash everything,’ proclaimed
Out
magazine in 2006. Indeed, Jamie had his fingers in many pies. Not only was he trying to make it into the Top 40 with Sons of Jim, he was still playing rugby, which he hadn’t stopped doing since being picked up by the Belfast Harlequins in his teens. He also swam regularly, played golf, indulged in yoga and religiously started every day with fifty press-ups.

His dogged determination in everything he did was astonishing. The music career soon after his split from Keira appeared to be bang on track. Sons of Jim had found management in Los Angeles and a dream partnership with music producer Brian Higgins, as well as a UK tour supporting KT Tunstall under their belt.

Jamie and David’s two singles – ‘Fairytale’ in 2005 and ‘My Burning Sun’ a year later – released on their own label Doorstep
had sold an encouraging number of copies through the internet alone. The pair had publicised the band themselves, and even produced a professional-looking album cover for ‘Fairytale’, with the songwriting duo posing on a bridge with leather jackets and matching grey scarves.

Sales for the EPs were encouraging and running into the hundreds; they performed regularly in a string of top London nightclubs, including Carling Academy in Islington, as well as appearing in more unusual venues like the Vans shoe store in the capital’s popular Carnaby Street. Jamie was determined to crack the music industry in whichever way was necessary and it wasn’t so much the venue that mattered, but rather the audience they would be reaching out to.

Charity appearances were also on the cards and the duo joined sporting heroes, boxing champ Barry McGuigan and Northern Ireland football manager Lawrie Sanchez, in the summer of 2006 for the BBC’s Sport Relief Mile in Belfast. After running the course, Sons of Jim performed to a crowd of adoring fans in Belfast’s Custom House Square.

Jamie was no stranger to many Belfast locals and found an immediate rapport with the audience. This was probably helped in no small part by the fact that his modelling career was followed scrupulously by the local newspaper, the
Belfast Telegraph
, and he was well-known to the city’s rugby fans as he had been playing for the Belfast Harlequins from the age of fifteen.

Indeed, as a teenager and young man in his twenties, rugby remained one of Jamie’s real passions, and he wasn’t prepared to
give up his childhood aspiration of being a successful sportsman anytime soon. Amongst the modelling campaigns, he was still managing to find time to play – and not just back in Belfast or London but also in matches across Europe. Jamie continued to play his favourite position of winger for a local team until he was twenty-four, as his wiry frame and fast pace meant that he was ideal for the job. ‘I’ve played on the wing since I was about eight. I’ve always needed to bulk up so until the modelling took off I was ramming Big Macs down my throat and doing plenty of bodyweight work. I’m over the Big Macs now, but I’ll still drop down and do press-ups whenever I find the time,’ he said of his lifelong passion for the game.

After a match in Sweden, three years after his split from Keira, Jamie thought that his rugby-playing days might be numbered after badly damaging his knee. He said of the tournament, ‘I was doing okay, but when I turned to run past one of their backs I found I no longer had that extra speed I once relied upon. Instead I go swimming as often as possible.’

Normally placid and easy-going, watching rugby was also one thing that could make Jamie’s blood boil. He clearly cared a lot about what happened on the field and was furious if Ireland lost. ‘The last time I lost it was watching Ireland play rugby,’ he admitted. ‘I got very angry because we lost – I was heartbroken. I get bad road rage as well, a lot of swearing!’

In between the weekends away getting sweaty on the rugby pitch, Jamie ensured that he also made time for his friends and family. It was important for him that amongst the glitz and glamour of modelling he remained grounded, knowing all too
well from experience that fame can quite easily disassociate people from their loved ones. As he had no real friends from the modelling world ‘because you only spend a few hours with models at a time’ it was his school friends from Methodist College in Belfast that meant the most to him. They had always been the glue that kept him together during the darkest of days and he was under no illusion: the good times could end at any moment.

He was also constantly reminded that life was extraordinarily precious by his father’s updates on his ongoing cancer treatment. While Professor Dornan ‘had more energy than any man I know’, it was undeniably hard for Jamie to cope with the thought that his only surviving parent had the same disease that killed the other – even if his father, unlike his mother, was able to fight it. Despite father and son often being hundreds of miles apart from each other – with Jamie either being in London or New York and Jim’s job taking him away from Belfast to hospitals across the globe – they tried to meet up as often as possible.

Jamie, who wasn’t keen on emailing and social media sites on the internet, insisted on a more traditional way of keeping in touch by sending handwritten letters to his dad. They also shared a passion for roast dinners on a Sunday and would try to enjoy a leisurely, lavish meal whenever they came together.

Jamie also kept his friends close at hand and nights out with the lads in London or back in Belfast were important to the now famous model and singer. One of Jamie’s greatest loves was a night out with his mates before curling up in bed with a good book. Despite his newfound career which traded off
his handsome physique, he still didn’t believe he was anything special. ‘I never had any reason to think I looked any different,’ he told
Vogue
magazine some years later when asked about his good looks while he was growing up.

True to his word, and clearly not precious about preserving himself for the camera, Jamie became legendary for opening bottles of beer with his teeth and enjoyed necking back pints of Guinness like his life depended on it. ‘I absolutely love the stuff,’ he said, ‘although I’ve overdone it a little recently thanks to four weddings back home in Northern Ireland,’ he said at the time. ‘I guess I’m just lucky with my genes,’ he replied when quizzed about how his body looked unaffected by his alcohol consumption.

Like most men in their twenties, he found that drinking was a sociable way of relaxing and forgetting about work – although Jamie could be known for overdoing it. ‘I’ve woken up on my stairs, curled up like a cat, one or two times after big nights out,’ he told
The Sun
newspaper when asked if he’d ever woken up somewhere strange. ‘I also woke up on the plane from Vancouver on the way here, just as they announced we were landing in London. I’d had a few drinks before the flight and don’t remember getting on the plane, so waking up was a bit of a shock!’

However, one night the high jinx took a turn for the worse when Jamie found himself embroiled in a terrifying fight. Drunk on his favourite beer, the model was out drinking in Infernos bar in Clapham, south London, when he told a fellow drinker that he was being rude, which was particularly uncalled for since it was
‘National Courtesy Day’ – a fact he had learnt from watching UK daytime TV show
Today With Des & Mel
that morning. Furious with the comment, the man headbutted Jamie, leaving him with a broken nose. Instead of going to hospital, he staggered home, swallowed some ibuprofen, slept fourteen hours and awoke covered in congealed blood. ‘It’s not a story one would associate with the ambassador for the Calvin Klein lifestyle,’ a journalist wrote afterwards.

To be fair, the incident was quite out of keeping for Jamie, who is known by his friends as ‘Daddy Dornan’ for being one of the more sensible and self-controlled within his group of friends. ‘When I go out with my mates, we’re a big group of Belfast boys and at the end of the night we can get a little, you know, hyperactive.

‘But I tend to get my sensible head on and can be quite strict with them, like “Calm down lads”. Which is why they call me Daddy Dornan.’

It was just as well that Jamie’s natural instinct was to stay in control, since fans were starting to come out of the woodwork on his precious nights out. While he’d been propositioned before over the internet, Jamie began to find that he was being approached by fans, as his fame meant that he was becoming instantly recognisable. Women had started to come up to him and chat him up, which took Jamie completely out of his comfort zone. A meal out with friends in London one night took a difficult turn for the model when an older woman approached him and wouldn’t leave him alone. ‘There was lots of me going “Oh really?” and turning away and mouthing at my friends for
help and lots of her pulling at my shoulder and asking, “Would you like some of my drink?” No way, I don’t know what you’ve put in it!’ he explained.

Jamie found the interest bizarre and although it was nowhere near the level that he had witnessed with his ex-girlfriend Keira, being approached by strangers left him feeling uncomfortable. Jamie’s feelings were compounded further when a man came up to him on the street and begged him to sign a poster showing the model wearing only pants. The fan explained that he was his ‘inspiration’. ‘I found that weird, signing my own crotch, thinking “Don’t be inspired by a man who happens to look all right semi-clothed”. There are so many things you could be inspired by. I mean it’s OK to be inspired by a woman in pants! Oh dear […] not that I’m suggesting that women’s only purpose is to look good in pants.

‘I just think men being idolised because they look good in pants, that’s a bit ridiculous isn’t it?’ he added.

While modelling left him cold, ever since his split from Keira he had ploughed all his drive and ambition into making a success out of his band, Sons of Jim. Music had always been important to him and he was obsessed with it. ‘My iPod would never get stolen at the gym. No one else would listen to the stuff I work out to […] Roy Harper, Led Zeppelin and The Kissaway Trail they all help me escape and channel my energies into my workout.’

He was also star-struck by fellow musicians and, despite experiencing his own fame, was intimidated by bands that he deemed talented and had made the big time. ‘I once saw Wayne
Coyne, lead singer of The Flaming Lips in a New York coffee shop. I didn’t even meet him and I was completely star-struck. He’s an alarmingly cool guy,’ he explained.

Jamie and his co-star David weren’t short of fans themselves. The press were hailing them as ‘Dylan-esque’ and a ‘modern day Simon and Garfunkel’, which both admitted was ‘a very great compliment’.

On the release of their single ‘Fairytale’, a soft-rock ballad which he described as ‘an edge of homegrown rock’, people had started to sit up and listen. The striking duo had also won fans while on the road with KT Tunstall, and Sons of Jim had sold a decent amount of singles online.

However, there was an element of self-doubt when it came to his music; the model was out of his comfort zone. ‘It’s a bit nerve wracking being in this business but we’re not expecting to rule the world or anything, we’re not Coldplay. We’re putting some music out there and if people like it then great and if they buy it because it’s good music then that’s all we want,’ he said at the time. Jamie was convinced that he would never make it big and definitely wasn’t expecting to make any real money out of it. ‘There are so many artists out there who I respect an awful lot who don’t sell millions of records but one thing’s for sure – their fans do respect them and love the music.’ It was something he really cared about, though, unlike his ever-increasing modelling assignments. In stark contrast, Jamie could pull these off with such ease that he had stunned even the world’s top photographers and, consequently, they earned him mega-bucks.

It was quite obvious that Jamie was looking for recognition
rather than reams of cash and while admitting that his first acting role opposite Kirsten Dunst was ‘very cool’, that particular avenue had dried up for the time being, so it was only sensible to concentrate on making a success out of the band.

The reality is that deep down Jamie knew that it wasn’t his strongest talent. In fact, in years to come, he would claim his music was ‘terrible’. ‘I did have a band. A terrible band called Sons of Jim,’ he admitted in 2012. ‘I sang and played the guitar and a whiney harmonica. I would have enjoyed the band more if we’d been good. You need to believe you’re the best band in the world for it to work – even if you’re not. I just didn’t believe in what we did.’

Reviews of the band had also become mixed and some critics had panned the duo. ‘It’s not that they’re a bad band it’s just that their sound is nothing new,’ one wrote. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what the fuss is about,’ said another online review. ‘It would have been far more interesting if he’d come clean and admitted the single was about Keira, then I would have bothered listening to the track all the way through.’

While the music double act had enjoyed the benefit of working with music producer Brian Higgins, who had helped a number of high profile pop acts, it was quite clear that they weren’t happy with their change in sound. Jamie felt that they were moving at right angles from where they wanted to be musically. ‘It was one of those things that moved on its own wave that we weren’t really surfing on,’ Jamie explained to
Elle
magazine. ‘I was young and with one of my best mates in the world – who still is one of my best mates in the world – and we were just having fun, but
other people were trying to make us go in a direction we hadn’t envisioned. Eventually something has to give.’

It wasn’t long before Jamie and David had to sit up and realise that the record label wasn’t going to sign them, nor was their management going to get them gigs in venues any larger than local clubs or student unions. ‘We were crap,’ Jamie admitted. ‘The management tried to go, “Hey, a model and whatever,” and make it a pop thing. We were pushed into something a bit rotten actually.’