j
amie Dornan drives down a
deserted road in the vast, sweep-
ing plains of the Australian out-
back. Suddenly in his mirror a
huge articulated lorry begins to
bear down on him with terrifying
speed. He panics, heads off road and
yet the truck keeps on coming, smash-
ing repeatedly into him from behind.
We’re only five minutes into The
Tourist, at which point you think: this
isn’t your typical BBC drama. Broad-
casting on New Year’s Day, this is a cin-
ematic show, with epic shots and a
price tag to match, the like of which we
haven’t seen since The Night Manager.
After the crash Dornan’s character, a
Brit who remains nameless, wakes upwith no memory. So begins the slow
unpicking of The Tourist’s central mys-
tery: why is Dornan there and why are
people trying to kill him?
“It’s a proper trip,” Dornan says. “Dif-
ferent to anything I’ve done before.”
Dornan, 39, is refreshingly honest
about how his career has yo-yoed since
his debut as a Calvin Klein model nick-
named “the Golden Torso” in the early
2000s (modelling didn’t satisfy him).
His acting breakthrough came as a
brooding psychopath in The Fall. Gillian
Anderson, his co-star, “really pushed for
me to be cast. I know how much of a
fight it was.”
That helped him to win the part of
Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades films,
which “made a ton of money” but the
“critics were horrendous about”. He is
still trying to move on from Grey, with
mixed success (see the roundly mocked
Irish rom-com Wild Mountain Thyme this
year), but is sanguine about bad reviews.
“You ride it. I’m in the wrong game if Ican’t take criticism.” The Tourist, though,
puts him firmly back in serious actor ter-
ritory — just in time for awards season.
It is a show that is hard to categorise.
“It’s both an action movie and a goofball
comedy. And a thriller,” Dornan says.
“One of my mates who I really trust said
it’s the best comedy ever. I’ve been
lucky enough to film both this and Bel-
fast during lockdown and they couldn’t
be more different.”
Belfast is Kenneth Branagh’s poignant
autobiographical film about how he
and his family fled the Troubles when
the actor was eight years old. Out inJanuary, it is up for seven Golden
Globes and won the audience award at
the Toronto International Film Festival,
a reliable form guide for the Oscars.
Dornan, who has been nominated for
the best supporting actor Golden Globe
for his performance as Branagh’s
father, grew up in the suburbs of Bel-
fast. He lives in Gloucestershire with
the singer-songwriter Amelia Warner
and their three daughters, but North-
ern Irish politics casts a long shadow.
“I wear the importance and the his-
tory of the place every day,” he says.
“Let’s be honest, the divisions are still
there today, particularly in working-
class communities. Sectarianism is
real. There’s not an actual war happen-
ing any more — and that’s huge — but
the problems haven’t gone away. It’s
important to try to understand it. Belfast
is an interesting way to see it, through
the eyes of a boy — the beginnings of a
conflict that ran on for 30 years.”
He has another connection to theI didn’t want to become
an estate agent in Belfast
and play a bit of club
rugby at weekends
TELEVISION
Jamie Dornan was a model known as
the Golden Torso before Fifty Shades of
Grey brought celebrity, cash — and ridicule.
Now he’s starring in a blockbuster BBC
drama and a film tipped for Oscars
‘i’m in the
Wrong
game if i
can’t take
criticism’
StePhen
armStrOng
interview
6 19 December 2021