Finding new shades to Jamie Dornan
With Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST (after that scene-stealing turn in Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar), the Northern Irish actor is finding different dimensions to his career
IN JAMIE DORNAN’S childhood home, deep in the suburbs of Belfast, you would always see one photo prominently displayed: a picture of Kenneth Branagh. “My father was a doctor at the Royal Victoria Hospital in West Belfast for his whole career,” the actor explains. “There was a picture that was always up in our house of Ken, my dad, and five or six other doctors, cutting a ribbon from when Ken had come to open a wing of the hospital. It reinforced this idea that this guy, who has gone on to do such unbelievable things, was from Belfast. It was inspiring.”
Few people are aware that Kenneth Branagh — he of that crisp, Shakespeare-refined English accent — is actually Northern Irish, born and raised. But they soon will be thanks to Belfast, Branagh’s upcoming semi-autobiographical drama, which depicts a typical working-class family in 1969, as The Troubles escalate. Branagh, who moved to England aged nine, has called it his “most personal film”. In a poetic twist, Dornan — whose father idolised Branagh — is now playing a proxy for Branagh’s own father.
Having previously auditioned for Branagh’s Thor (“Not for Thor himself — one of Thor’s other lads,” he says), Dornan describes his character, named ‘Pa’, as “a very honest, humble man who is just trying to do the right thing for his family.” Like Branagh’s real father was, Pa is a carpenter, who uses his connections in England to help the family escape the conflict.
While The Troubles inevitably cast a shadow over the story, the family leads a “quite glamorous lifestyle for a working-class North Belfast family,” Dornan says. “Often characters portrayed in that part of the world, there’s this sort of bleakness. It gets a bit ‘poverty porn’. Going forward, with the stories I want to tell coming out of that part of the country, I want to get away from that idea that everything’s doom and gloom at home. That’s not how I remember home to be.”
There are other perspectives he’s interested in exploring. During lockdown, Dornan co-wrote a screenplay with fellow Belfast-born actor Conor Macneill, set in their hometown. “It’s a comingof-age story about a 17-year-old girl,” he explains. Though not strictly autobiographical, “It’s that thing of trying to elevate stories from the north of Ireland through a slightly different lens. Tell stories that people aren’t expecting from that part of the world.” He hopes to film it next year.
Dornan seems more confident than ever to tell only the stories he wants to tell. Even if — as was the case in last year’s Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar — those stories involve singing love songs to a seagull. “It’s a banger, isn’t it?” Dornan says of ‘Edgar’s Prayer’, which became a hit among comedy fans. “My dream is someone drops a gnarly remixed version of that song. But that was the intention — it was fun to show a different side of me that maybe people wouldn’t have expected.” Six years after becoming a household name with Fifty Shades Of Grey, Jamie Dornan is revealing more of himself than ever.