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Jamie Dornan has taken a lot of quirky and varied roles since first starring in Fifty Shades of Grey back in 2015. However, he also turned heads on Once Upon A Time on ABC and had made a bit of a career out of being on-screen eye candy as recently as 2018 when Fifty Shades Freed came out. As it turns out, however, in his younger days, Dornan was not particularly smooth with the ladies, though his turn as Christian Grey (or that shirt-ripping scene) may have had his fans fooled.
In a recent interview, Jamie Dornan spoke about his growing up experience and how he can identify with one of his latest characters more closely than the one (Grey) we may more identify him with. In Wild Mountain Thyme he plays a character who isn’t forward with his feelings and who is awkward in many ways, something that occurred when Dornan was a young lad as well. In fact he told Sky News he "struggled" with the confidence factor when it came to trying to get the attention of the people he was interested in early on.
A lot of swing and misses for me, I think most people have that history, don't they?... I definitely was someone who struggled with confidence with girls when I was a kid. I definitely had a lot of girls that I really liked who definitely didn't like me back. At least [Anthony] has someone who really wants him back, he just can't see it.
While Anthony isn’t exactly a kid in Wild Mountain Thyme, he is certainly awkward around Rosemary, played by Emily Blunt. The whole way through the film the two are dancing around the probability that they are meant for one another. There’s even a whole subplot about a fence that was put up by Rosemary’s family and interferes with Anthony’s family accessing their own property that would simply be solved if the two were to come together into their own union. But as Jamie Dornan noted, that’s a struggle for Anthony and that’s something Dornan could relate to with his own growing up experiences.
I can relate a bit to Anthony's lack of ability to see what's in front of him and what's good for him. He's a bit in his own mind about all that and his own confidence.
These days Jamie Dornan is married to Amelia Warner, a composer who actually did the music for Wild Mountain Thyme. Together, they have three daughters, whom Dornan often gets to behave dorkily around. (Please also read his amusing story about spending money on Trolls World Tour in quarantine for a real look at the type of person he is.) He’s often up to some silly shenanigans with his girls on social media, as well.
So, I guess whatever is in his personality that made him awkward as a young adult is perfectly acceptable for all the dad moments. We’ll keep you posted the next time Jamie Dornan gets up to these sorts of shenanigans. In the meantime, you can definitely catch the actor engaging with his sillier side in Wild Mountain Thyme or, heck, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, both out on VOD.
