Summary
- Jamie Dornan and his wife hid to escape the negative reviews of Fifty Shades of Grey.
- Despite the “ridicule,” the Fifty Shades trilogy was a financial success, earning over $1.3 billion dollars at the worldwide box office.
- Dornan’s portrayal of Christian Grey was brilliantly realistic and authentic, creating a pathos that other actors may not have been able to achieve for the character.
Jamie Dornan is not “fifty shades of fu—ed up,” as Christian Grey so eloquently put it. That was merely a character appearing in a wildly successful film series. No, Dornan is an exceptional actor who claims that he and his wife, Amelia Warner, actually “hid” to escape those awful Fifty Shades of Grey reviews back in the day. Dornan said during his appearance on BBC Sounds’ Desert Island Discs podcast:
“I think I hid. You know, I’m coming off the back of career-altering reviews for The Fall and BAFTA nominations, and all this sort of madness The Fall brought to just ridicule, almost. Actually, we went down to […] Sam Taylor-Johnson and I and her husband to their place, and they weren’t there. And they sort of let us have their place in the country. And we sort of hid there for a while. And just shut ourselves from the world a bit. And then sort of came out the other side.”
Despite the “ridicule,’ Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) went on to make $570 million worldwide, which was followed up by the financial success of the original film’s two sequels: Fifty Shades Darker ($382 million) and Fifty Shades Freed ($372 million).
While Doran was unjustly scrutinized for his portrayal of Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades trilogy, the actor’s realistic and authentic performance of the emotionally compromised and complicated dominant actually creates a pathos that many other thespians simply wouldn’t have been able to pull off. For instance, imagine how ridiculous Christian could have come across had someone else chosen to play him over the top?
Related Fifty Shades of Grey: 10 Actors Almost Cast in the Movies Here are the actors that were almost cast in Fifty Shades of Grey.
Jamie Dornan Delivered in Fifty Shades
Universal Pictures
Born in the Irish town of Holywood just five miles outside of Belfast, Jamie Dornan made the switch from model to actor. And his “breakout” role as the serial killer, Paul Spector, aka the Belfast Strangler, on the BBC’s television series The Fall, undoubtedly helped him land the role of Christian Grey in 2015’s Fifty Shades of Grey. But despite the “ridicule” Dornan felt about the role and the film trilogy, the thespian has no regrets. Doran said during the same podcast:
“It [the film] made so much money that two or three were like greenlit overnight. So, it was like a strange thing, because then you are like, there is a bit of ridicule here, and I’m now contractually doing two more [laughs] of them and knowing that there would be more of that damnation to come.”
Release Date February 11, 2015
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson
Runtime 125
Studio Universal PicturesFIfty-shades-of-grey
Tagline Mr. Grey will see you now.
Dornan added:
“You know, I have just had very glowing reviews for recent work and there wouldn’t be many of them that don’t mention Fifty Shades in them. You know, a lot of reviews are like, ‘He’s great, but lest we forget when he wasn’t great here [laughs].’ But regrets that I did them, no.”
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