Jamie Dornan has given an extraordinary insight into his own heartbreaking childhood during The Troubles and revealed what was really going on with his marriage as he started filming Fifty Shades of Grey.
The Northern Irish star, 41, has told how he helped his obstetrician father look under the family car for bombs because he treated Catholic and Protestants mothers in Belfast in the 1980s and 1990s – and how his dad nearly delivered his own first baby.
The father-of-three said that Jim Dornan flew with him and his heavily pregnant wife Amelia Warner in case she gave birth on their way to Vancouver where he was about to play Christian Grey for the first time in November 2013.
Suffering tragedy-after-tragedy, he also lost four close friends in a car crash by the time he turned 18.
Jamie also cried again when he spoke of his wife Amelia and all she has done ‘for me and our family’. He said they met at a house party in 2010, fell in love and married in 2013. They have three daughters, Dulcie, Elva and Alberta.
READ MORE: Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan tells BBC’s Desert Island Discs he went into ‘hiding’ to avoid ridicule after film’s release
Jamie said that his father, an eminent doctor who worked at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast for decades, delivered more than 6,000 babies during his career.
But as The Troubles raged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jamie revealed that as a child he would help check if his dad’s car was booby-trapped.
He also spoke of bomb scares being a normal part of his life in Northern Ireland as he grew up.
He said: ‘There were times when dad would go out checking under his car for bombs and me doing it with him thinking it was kind of funny activity, getting on your hands and knees and looking under the car’.
But the star also revealed how prominent figures on both sides of the political and religious divide later assured his father and his family would be safe so he could continue his work.
He said: ‘Dad got letters from – I can’t really name names here – but from prominent figures from the loyalist community and prominent figures from the republican community both based on difficult pregnancies that someone close to them had and dad had sort of helped them through and everything and basically saying from our side it’s all good and then from our side it’s all good.’
Jamie also revealed that his father very nearly delivered one of his daughters on a private jet crossing the Atlantic to America.
He said: ‘I got cast in Fifty Shades four weeks before the start of shooting. Amelia was 37 or 38 weeks pregnant. All our focus was on that. It was the first child.
‘All of a sudden they said I would be filming Fifty Shades in Vancouver and Millie was so pregnant she wasn’t allowed on a commercial flight, so they said they would put us in a private jet but needed an obstetrician on the plane in case she goes into labour on the way there.
‘My dad happily volunteered for that role on a trip in a private jet. Somewhere over New York, I saw dad just call over the air stewardess and order a gin and tonic.’
He said his father told him: ‘Even if she starts having contractions now, she won’t be going into active labour until we’ve landed by that point it’ll be taken into someone else’s hands anyway’.
Jamie said: ‘That was it. Dad just had four gin and tonics.’
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But the actor and model revealed that his father, a celebrated doctor and academic in Belfast, decided to have four gin and tonics as soon as he knew that the baby was not going to arrive before they landed in Canada.
In an extraordinary episode of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Jamie also broke down as he described being stuck in Australia filming The Tourist when his father died from complications related to Covid-19 three years ago and ‘never got to say goodbye’. He called 2021 ‘the worst year’ of his life.
Jamie also spoke of the death of his mother Lorna, a nurse, from cancer when he was 16. He cried as he said described learning her illness was terminal and struggling with the guilt of not being able to remember everything about her.
