“Your dignity is intact as much as it’s all tucked away in a little flesh-coloured bag,” Jamie Dornan told British GQ referring to the filming of the sex scenes in the movie version of the bestselling ‘mommy porn’ book Fifty Shades Of Grey. “As a guy, you put all your essentials in a little bag and you tie it up like a little bag of grapes and it is tucked away. It’s quite a peculiar thing to do every day.”
Despite the explicit sexuality of the book, Dornan insists it’s a love story first. But he knew what he was signing on for when he took the role of BDSM-obsessed billionaire Christian Grey who gets it on with a 22-year-old virgin Anastasia Steele played by Dakota Johnson (Melanie Griffith’s daughter). “I would be pretty foolish to go into that project thinking that I am going to get away with people not seeing my…my torso at least. But I think we signed things to make sure that they didn’t see the whole shebang. But I am certainly exposed. And yeah, I am comfortable enough with that.” He was just as comfortable doing research for the role in a London sex “dungeon” watching the interplay between dominants and submissives.
The Irish actor, great-nephew of screen legend Greer Garson, felt no pressure “because my whole thing about this role is that Christian is such a fantasy, he’s in a way like a superhero. He gets described as the epitome of male beauty, and that doesn’t exist. It’s not like a real thing.” He had one happy distraction too. “My wife and I had our baby three days before we started filming, so you can only imagine how mad that time was. I was changing diapers and having baby vomit on my shoulders and waking up four times a night when we were to shoot.”
On the subject of his next project, Dornan who currently plays a serial killer in the British TV series The Fall says all he really wants now is a job “where I don’t tie women to beds”.
Fifty Shades Of Grey releases on February 13
