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Open in new tab Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan knows the real meaning of pain, his dad has revealed.
The actor, making women swoon with his role as sexual sadist Christian Grey, is haunted by the childhood loss of his mum – and his four best friends.
And he has been a huge emotional support to his father Jim, who is battling leukaemia. Jim revealed: “Jamie’s incredibly sensitive. If somebody’s hurting, he will hurt the most. Watching his mother die of pancreatic cancer over a year and a half made him a very soulful boy.”
Jamie was just 16 when his mum died. Soon afterwards, his four best friends were killed in a car crash. Speaking from his Belfast home Jim, a professor, said: “I was very honest while his mother was dying. “We didn’t take away hope, but I knew time was limited. It made him very strong. “Jamie’s first words when I told him I had leukaemia were, ‘You’re going to be OK dad, aren’t you?’ He gets on with things – a deep, thinking person.
“He and his then girlfriend gave me a present they’d made me together. “It was a little blue and yellow ceramic plate that said ‘Hope’. That’s the colours of our favourite football team, Bangor Football Club.”
Jim, who lives with second wife Samina, added: “At first I was very afraid and ill. But Jamie flew home a lot, he’d fetch me to watch gigs with his band, Sons of Jim.”
Of Jamie’s childhood, he said: “He had a very outdoor life – a good Scout. When he was little his sisters used to dress him in their clothes and wheel him around in a doll’s pram. He grew out of that quickly! “When he got Christian Grey, I flew to London and we had lunch with the whole family. I said, Son, I’m very proud of you.”