It was the day before Dornan’s new film, “Belfast,” an Irish coming-of-age story, would screen for the first time in the Northern Irish city that bears its name, a city where Dornan spent the first 19 years of his life.
“We could get all the good reviews in the world, but what we really want is for people from Belfast to like this film,” Dornan said, fidgeting in his armchair.
Those good reviews from the rest of the world weren’t just a hypothetical: Since its first screening at the Telluride Film Festival in late August, “Belfast” has received such fond reactions that many pundits consider it a front-runner for the best-picture Oscar.
“Belfast” is filmed in black and white, was directed by a five-time Oscar nominee and stars Judi Dench as Dornan’s mother; in other words, it’s a long way from the “Fifty Shades of Grey” franchise, a critically derided sex trilogy that made Dornan famous even as it hung a millstone around his neck.
I met Dornan in early November at Soho Farmhouse, a members club in the British countryside; he had driven in from the nearby Cotswolds, where he lives with his musician wife, Amelia Warner, and their three daughters.
In the Netflix thriller series “The Fall” and in “Fifty Shades of Grey,” even when his lips curled into a knowing smirk, those eyes still kept some secrets, while in the recent comedy “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” Dornan’s eyeballs looked more like inky black dots, fitting for a movie that plays as a live-action cartoon.
Every time young Buddy looks at his Pa, it’s as though he is beholding the sun itself, and Branagh leans into that hero worship, shooting Dornan in black and white as a literal silver-screen idol who croons “Everlasting Love” in the movie’s centerpiece scene.
He was so eager to see “Belfast” — his son was starring opposite Dench, after all — and then, in March of this year, he died of Covid-19.
“He was the greatest of men, so kind and wonderful, and he gave so much time and honesty and respect to everyone he met,” Dornan said.
Dornan was also eager to use what he had learned from being a father, things you just can’t embody until you experience them yourself.
And though he has now lived away from Belfast longer than he ever lived in it, so many things about the place remains innate.
DORNAN LEFT BELFAST just as he was about to turn 20, three years after his mother died from pancreatic cancer.
Dornan didn’t win the show, but after moving to London, he still rose rapidly through the ranks of male modeling, which is to say he posed with Kate Moss, dated Keira Knightley and was dubbed “The Golden Torso” by this very newspaper.
But to succeed as an actor, you really do have to care, and you have to find it in you to keep caring even when you blow an audition, when you lose the role you would have killed for, or when you find yourself the object of public ridicule.
Dornan had always wanted to act but was afraid to start caring, so he stuck with modeling until it began to curdle.
His first audition was to play a count who catches Kirsten Dunst’s eye in “Marie Antoinette” , and he booked the role immediately.
He cast about for ages, trying to find a project that would stick, and even when he landed a series-regular role as the handsome sheriff on the ABC fantasy series “Once Upon a Time,” he was abruptly killed off after nine episodes.
But that’s when he met Warner, whom he credits with being a stabilizing influence on his life and career.
Dornan remembers how he regarded “Fifty Shades of Grey” as an outsider: Of course Hollywood would be eager to turn E.L.
“They’re always like, ‘It’s obviously not for me, I’m a straight guy, and I have a wife’ or ‘I have a girlfriend, and she likes you, that’s why the photograph’s happening,’” he said.
On that front, Dornan is trying and has been for a while .
Dornan is open about the movies he covets, and he has met with the Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige about donning a cape and tights.
That desire isn’t to win the love he never got.
A FEW DAYS after our time in the countryside, I hopped on a video call with Dornan to ask how his hometown premiere went.
“It was crazy; I really felt physically sick leading up to it,” Dornan said.
And sitting among the people of Belfast, his own performance finally clicked into place: “It was the first time I watched it where I wasn’t going, ‘God, I hate my face.
After the film ended and audience members came up to him for long conversations about Belfast and “Belfast,” Dornan realized he was actually living through one of the best nights of his life.