Fifty Shades of Jamie Dornan (4 page)

T
he chemistry was unmistakable. Jamie walked onto the set of his first ever professional photo campaign on that steamy New York day in August 2003 and there stood Keira Knightley. The pair had been hired by exclusive jewellers Asprey for their new collection – he, as the hot model with chiselled good looks who was meant to be drooled over – and Keira, the Hollywood starlet touted as the next big thing.

The stunning eighteen-year-old, who already had a string of blockbusters to her name, including
Pirates of the Caribbean
and
Love Actually
, had been signed up by the royal jewellers to put some sparkle back into their fortunes after it lost £12 million the year before … and she didn’t fail to dazzle. Voted the most desirable woman in Britain by
Tatler
magazine a few weeks previously, and predicted to be bigger than ‘Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kate Winslet put together’, Jamie would
have been forgiven for expecting his campaign co-star to be something of a diva.

Thankfully, and to Jamie’s surprise, the young actress was remarkably down to earth and up for a laugh. Additionally, the pretty teenager provided a welcome distraction as Jamie set foot on his first major modelling assignment which under any circumstances would be intimidating, as this campaign was a massive deal. ‘As soon as Jamie walked into Select’s office his career just sky rocketed. His first job was huge, the kind of contract that most wannabe models dream of landing a few years down the line. Not only was it Asprey, but it was for legend Bruce Weber.

‘Jamie models effortlessly, he was incredibly natural in front of the camera from day one, there’s not a hint of nerves,’ an industry source revealed.

Despite his composure, the location itself – Westbury House, a sprawling, lavish mansion in Long Island, New York – was intimidating enough, let alone the team of professionals who greeted him. Bruce Weber was taking photographs while a number of famous actors and socialites had been hired for the campaign, including Oscar-winning actor Joseph Fiennes.

Jamie wasn’t the only handsome male model to be employed for the job but there was something about this fresh-faced clothes horse that must have caught Keira’s eye – and it was probably his laid-back attitude to the job. In reality, since Jamie went into modelling as a means of becoming an actor, right from the start he found it easy not to take the job too seriously – that and the fact that he knew he had more to offer than just a pretty face.
‘I generally don’t like admitting, “I’m a model.” I find that a lot of people have preconceptions – they think that you’re going to be dim or vain. I’m just a guy who did modelling for a job. I actually came to London to join drama school,’ he said.

Keira, already an established actor, was also at the start of her career. Just out of school, the pretty star seemed happy-go-lucky and, although ambitious, she was clearly still in the mindset of just ‘seeing what happens’. This particular shoot was no exception and Keira claimed the real draw of being in the advert was getting her hands on some seriously expensive jewels rather than what it would do for her already enviable profile. ‘I’m such a sucker for diamonds,’ she admitted in an interview during the campaign. ‘They’re beautiful. I’m single at the moment and happy to stay that way for a long time, but if a man were to buy me diamonds I might change my mind.’

The singleton’s laid-back attitude towards dating also appealed to Jamie and, as they hung out, not only was it obvious that they physically desired each other, they were seriously hitting it off in the personality stakes too. Like Keira, chronically shy Jamie wasn’t obsessed with all the trappings of fame and its red carpet appearances and showbiz parties; instead, they had a shared passion for home-made cooking, nights in with their close-knit families and shopping for nick-nacks in charity shops.

Other men may have been intimidated by Keira’s beauty and status but Jamie was in his element in the ‘controlled environment’ that the photographer’s film set afforded him and he found it easy to laugh and flirt with the actress. ‘I would have way more chance with someone who is deemed to be really
beautiful – like a model or an actress – than I would with a normal girl in the street,’ he said later. ‘When I meet girls like that it’s a very controlled environment or we’re working together. In the real world when you’re just out with your mates in a bar I wouldn’t know what to do.’

After the shoot, the pair exchanged numbers and had plenty enough in common to keep in contact. As well as swapping stories about life in the fast lane, since they were both being inundated with job offers, Jamie admitted to Keira that he held a lifelong ambition to be an actor like her. So she put Jamie in touch with her high-powered agent Lindy King at London’s PFD agency, who she was sure would put him on the right track.

With everything going their way career-wise, the pair’s relationship strengthened, hindered only by the fact that it was a long-distance affair. Jamie was sent to New York, where he continued to carve out his modelling career, while Keira flew back to London where she still lived with her parents in a three-bedroom terrace house in Teddington. However, she wasn’t back home for long before she had landed the role of Guinevere in big-budget movie
King
Arthur
and was jetting to Ireland for the start of filming.

The pair kept in contact over the phone and promised to meet up whenever possible. Those close to the couple, and Keira’s parents in particular, were thrilled about the developing romance. Her TV actor father Will and playwright mother Sharman Macdonald warmed to the mild-mannered doctor’s son who appeared to share their daughter’s work ethic and down-to-earth nature. ‘Jamie isn’t interested in being in the
limelight, he’s not chasing Keira’s fame, if anything that would put him off,’ a friend told a magazine, continuing:

‘When someone like Keira goes out with a guy, you always look at the boyfriend and wonder if they are in it for their own gain. Not Jamie, he is extremely successful in what he does and shy about it. They are an excellent match.’

However, not everyone was happy. When Keira broke the news to her ex-boyfriend Del Synnott in October, he was mortified. She had dumped him a few months earlier after two years together and in November the distraught twenty-five-year-old actor was rushed to hospital following a suspected overdose. A wave of gossip broke out in the media and amongst his friends that, heartbroken, he had gone on a bender which had ended in disaster, although his family hotly denied the speculation.

Keira had fallen for the
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
star in 2001 on the set of the US TV movie
Princess of Thieves
and while she had found it relatively easy to get over their split by throwing herself into work, the actor had taken it hard. ‘It was different for Del,’ a friend explained. ‘Del is not working at the moment and had too much time to brood on the whole affair. He got really low.’

Keira evidently still had some residual feelings – or guilt – for Del and rushed to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north London, to stay with him overnight. Under such tense circumstances, Jamie’s relationship with the star took a natural back seat. ‘Keira was mortified when she found out what had happened to Del. She rushed to his bedside and stayed all night. When we heard he was in hospital we all assumed the worst
because he has been so upset about breaking up from Keira,’ a friend told the
News of the World
newspaper. ‘She has insisted that she have a break from Jamie until everything is sorted out.’

Her mother Sharman was also concerned about her daughter’s ex-lover and admitted, ‘We are in constant touch with the Synnott family. Del is being taken care of by his family and is well.’

Jamie, meanwhile, was still in New York and was having something of his own wake-up call after discovering – to his horror – that thanks to his links to Keira he had become boldface tabloid fodder overnight. It was the first time the model’s life had been thrown under the media microscope and he hated every second of it. His agents told him not to talk about Keira and to pass on any queries to them. As a result, their phones were ringing off the hook, as journalists wanted to know every detail about the new man in Keira Knightley’s life, and even Jamie’s family and friends were also being approached for slices of gossip.

The handsome model returned to his family home in Northern Ireland to hide from the press and spend time with his level-headed father Jim and ever-supportive family. Those who knew the carefree twenty-one-year-old were shocked by the sudden and intense public scrutiny into his life and were worried about how his fiercely private family would cope. ‘We had thought the whole relationship was off,’ a close family friend admitted. ‘The whole matter has come as a bit of a shock to Jamie and his family. I don’t think he imagined he’d be thrown into the limelight like this.’

And while Keira was denying she had ever dated Jamie,
branding the idea as ‘rubbish’, the model didn’t appear to be doing so well at keeping schtum and mistakenly admitted to a newspaper that they were still an item. Although the media novice had followed instructions, telling a journalist that they should contact his agent if they wanted any information, he had confirmed his relationship with Keira in doing so. ‘Basically my agency have said if anyone calls me I have to forward all calls onto them,’ he told
The People
newspaper. Stressing he couldn’t say any more about his girlfriend, he added, ‘I can’t. I’m really sorry I can’t.’

It hadn’t been the easiest start to their relationship, but after the storm of publicity died down, the pair were able to continue their romance with less distraction. ‘He’s great, really sweet and sexy. I’m mad about him,’ she revealed. ‘He keeps me sane when things get stressful and we always have fun.’

The duo discovered that they had an incredible amount in common: shunning posh eateries for small cafes and bistros, shopping in charity shops and even taking the bus over expensive cabs. ‘I still get on the bus and go shopping at the supermarket,’ Keira admitted in a newspaper interview, ‘although with my face on just about every bus it’s been a bit more difficult really.’

Jamie was also the perfect gentleman to her English rose: polite, shy, driven and, above all, loyal. Keira was dating someone who, despite his good looks, wouldn’t stray. ‘I’m a loyal person,’ he explained. ‘I hate the idea of even switching banks. Even though I could be saving money, I really like the guy at the bank, so I just couldn’t let him down.’

Although they were both successful in their own right – Keira
had started to command over £1.5 million a film and Jamie was being inundated with modelling requests – they both shared a desire to lead as normal a life as possible. However, with their heavy work schedules meaning that they were often thousands of miles apart, it was going to be tough. Keira had already admitted that she was finding it difficult keeping tabs on her personal life. ‘I woke up one morning and realised I haven’t spoken to my best friend for a month-and-a-half. She’d split up with her previous boyfriend and already got another one and I didn’t know about any of it,’ she said at the time. ‘I’m not good with phones and I don’t have email, I can’t use a computer, so not being in touch is totally my fault.’

It was clearly a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder for Keira, though, when she admitted to missing Jamie on the set of
King Arthur.
After four months spent in Ireland’s Wicklow Mountains filming the historical blockbuster, she was pining for more than just dinner dates with the handsome model. ‘I feel like I’m at university but without the shagging – which is unfortunate,’ she confessed.

As they saw each other so little, it was no surprise when the rumour mill started churning out stories in early 2004 that they had split – and by February there were whispers in the press that Jamie had lost his girlfriend to actor Adrien Brody, who was playing Keira’s lover in the psychological thriller
The Jacket.

The pair had the obligatory steamy sex scene together and Adrien was reportedly helping to calm her nerves by taking vodka and brandy to her caravan before shoots. They were also staying in the same block of flats in Glasgow and had been spotted
exploring the city’s nightlife together, including a ‘date’ at a White Stripes gig. In February 2004 news agency WENN claimed that Keira was inseparable from her handsome co-star, adding, ‘This follows Knightley’s recent split with model Jamie Dornan. A movie insider says, “They are very close and spend a lot of time together. Keira and Adrien really seem to have clicked.”’

The rumours of an affair were false and it was the first of many trying situations that the new couple would have to face together. A furious Adrien also hit back later in the year when the stories were threatening to damage his own relationship, as well as harming Keira and Jamie’s reputation. ‘We were said to be having intimate, candlelit pasta dinners at my apartment, but that’s not true,’ he explained. ‘We ate together a couple of times because we were working but it never went further than that.’

Two weeks after reports of their split, the now billboard-famous model jetted to Glasgow to see Keira on set and the pair were seen strolling through a park in the Scottish city before stopping for a hug and intimate chat. It was quite clear that the relationship hadn’t quite fizzled out yet – far from it, in fact. Behind the scenes the pair had started discussing their future together and Keira – despite her promising start in acting – was considering a change of tack by going to university.

Jamie was reportedly ‘dead against’ her plans to go to Oxford Brookes, since he had always rejected the idea of getting a university degree in favour of choosing his own path instead. He also reportedly allayed concerns that despite her latest film
King Arthur
being panned by critics, her career was too good to give up. Cruel cynics mused, meanwhile, that he was probably
worried that his famous lover would be mobbed with male students wanting to date her. ‘Jamie thinks Keira is making a name for herself in Hollywood and can study anytime so doesn’t understand why she wants to do it straight away,’ a friend told a newspaper. ‘He feels she is only eighteen and the world is her oyster. He just wants to make sure Keira makes the right decision. He seems to think she’d be completely mobbed with male admirers at university whereas in the world of film she’s one of many beautiful people and less likely to be led astray,’ a source added.